“I saw that the war effort was promoted through posters, and invariably these posters would be of Rosie the Riveter, of white women being the iconic symbol of the war effort at home,” Mark Gaston Pearce says. “I knew there were other Rosies, and those other Rosies needed to be represented.”

Related article: Labor of Love: Mark Gaston Pearce uses art and law to draw attention to workers’ rights