Women's Role In WWII

This memorial commemorates the women of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS was an organization of women spies established by Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II. There were 400,000 women who served. At the early stages of the war, women were greatly overlooked and thought to play an insignificant role. But during the war, women began to grow in numbers; for example, 1940-1945 the number of women in the United States workforce increased by 10%. Although they gained much respect, the women of the OSS weren’t always recognized for their noteworthy contributions. This memorial shows that what people perceived women’s role in the war effort to be was considered inferior to a man’s. The purpose of our played a major role in helping …show more content…
We would like to publish it there because William Forest Park was one of the main facilities where they would train the women spies to work in combat. We would like people to interact with the memorial by walking into the space and looking at all of the pictures and quotes on the walls. The mood we wish to convey in our memorial, will make people think about the actual roles women played in World War II. We want the way people perceive women to change. We want them to realize they were wrong about OSS women, and if they could go back in time that they would reward them for their …show more content…
Like the visitor is surrounded by it. The magnifying glass makes the small text seem big, similar to how at first people didn’t respect women in the war. But later on, the respect began to grow and become larger. The magnifying glass is a symbol that looking deeper within will show the importance of what is beneath. Beneath are the real jobs women completed in World War II not just paperwork, but independent problem solving and combat jobs. We used wood for the walls to show that the women in the war were strong and tough, they didn’t break down after one failed mission. The ground is… The images we chose for the top half of one wall are a photo of the entire OSS team and the identity badge of Maureen Patterson. We chose to put these on top because these are what people at this time saw easily. This is what they perceived the OSS to be; just a group of people that did things in the war. On the bottom half the images need the magnifying glass to be clearly seen. The images are of Barbara Lauwers getting a bronze star, Elizabeth P. McIntosh on duty, and Elizabeth Swantek awarded CIA Career Intelligence