The CBS radio show, American Women, set out to inspire women to join the workforce during World War II. Millions of men were in the military and overseas and women needed to take on new responsibilities, many outside the home for the first time.
The show was broadcast nightly from August 1943 to June 1944.
In the early episodes, women who faced objections from their husbands and fathers, were heard courageously persuading the men in their lives to let them go to work. Women were portrayed working in drugstores and as taxi drivers. Listeners heard young women and older women alike taking on jobs in their communities.
Later episodes highlighted the work of the Women’s Army Corps and encouraged women to enlist. One featured a dramatization of an Army nurse caring for soldiers in a North African hospital.
Read the scripts of the American Women broadcasts in the Frank and Doris Hursley papers at UW’s American Heritage Center.