Females in Factories

There are now 16,000,000 U.S. women with jobs, 3,500,000 of them in war industry. In a factory job which does not require strength, a contented woman worker can turn out half again as much work as a man. The rub: keeping the women contented. So prone are they to complain, get sick, ache, stay home, quit, that many a factory supervisor will be glad when his women are paid off for good.

To help solve Lockheed Aircraft's female problem, Dr. Marion Janet Dakin spent four months incognito on almost every kind of woman's job in the company's Burbank plant. In last fortnight's Industrial Medicine, she reports what she found out.

"Probably the most important single answer . . . was that aircraft work is not too heavy for the physical capabilities of the average woman. The only jobs that tired me physically were those at which I was unhappy. Both were light work. . . . I developed headache, neck ache, backache and menstrual disturbances. . . .

"One job that did not tire me physically was considered one of the 'toughest' jobs we have for women . . . riveting on the upright wing jigs. But I loved that job. . . ."

The Trouble with Women. Dr. Dakin found that, contrary to rumor:

P: Vibration from a rivet gun does nothing to the muscles and nerves of a woman's hand. The vibration is imperceptible. "Rivet arm is due simply to prolonged use of the same group of muscles in a tense position."

P: Riveting does not cause breast cancer. "In a woman riveter [the disease] is purely coincidental."

P: Vibration has nothing to do with "riveter's ovaries"--colloquial name for female disorders in general. Pelvic complaints are either coincidental or recurrences of previous disorders from standing up too long.

P: Women can endure noise as well as men. One woman at Lockheed is happy running a speed hammer, though speed hammers are so noisy that they "have to be enclosed in a soundproof room to pre vent their disturbing the drop-hammer operators."

The real trouble with women, Dr. Dakin believes, is mental and emotional mal adjustment to industry. Unused to machinery, they are easy prey to suggestions that machines are bad for their "delicate nervous systems." They expect sympathy and special attention. They are easily up set by troubles at home. They use muscles tensely from fear of failure or excessive determination to do well.

Saving the Women. To keep Lockheed women at work, Dr. Dakin now has a Woman's Clinic far removed from the plant's first-aid headquarters. To the Clinic comes any woman whose complaint "is thought by the patient, her supervisor or her doctor to be due to the cumulative effect of her work." Her most successful remedies: 1) a transfer (e.g., giving a fat girl a sedentary job); 2) arranging for variety in monotonous work; 3) lessons in avoiding muscle strain; 4) reassurance that the job in question does not cause sterility.

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