“A pioneer herself (one of LIFE magazine”™s original four staff photographers, America”™s first accredited woman photographer during WWII, the first authorized to fly on a combat mission, etc.), Bourke-White spent time in 1943 in Gary, Indiana, chronicling “women ”¦ handling an amazing variety of jobs” in steel factories “some completely unskilled, some semiskilled and some requiring great technical knowledge, precision and facility,” as LIFE told its readers in its August 9, 1943, issue. The magazine went on to note:

In 1941 only 1% of aviation employees were women, while this year they will comprise an estimated 65% of the total. Of the 16,000,000 women now employed in the U.S., over a quarter are in war industries. Although the concept of the weaker sex sweating near blast furnaces, directing giant ladles of molten iron or pouring red-hot ingots is accepted in England and Russia, it has always been foreign to American tradition. Only the rising need for labor and the diminishing supply of manpower has forced this revolutionary adjustment.”

Source: Cosgrove, Ben. “World War II: Photos of Women Factory Workers on the Home Front, 1943.” LIFE, 2 Nov. 2020, www.life.com/history/women-of-steel-life-with-female-factory-workers-in-world-war-ii/.