![]() ![]() ![]() However temporary and unprecedented the wartime crisis, American women would find that their individual and collective experiences from 1941 to 1945 prevented them from stepping back into a prewar social and economic structure. Race, class, sexuality, age, religion, education, and region of birth, among other factors, combined to limit opportunities for some women while expanding them for others. Yet dominant gender norms provided ways to maintain social order amidst fast-paced change, and when some women challenged these norms, they faced harsh criticism. Social mores were tested by the demands of war, allowing women to benefit from the shifts and make alterations of their own. The foremost message to women-that their activities and sacrifices would be needed only “for the duration” of the war-was both a promise and an order, suggesting that the war and the opportunities it created would end simultaneously. government, together with the nation’s private sector, instructed women on many fronts and carefully scrutinized their responses to the wartime emergency. Between 19, an untold number moved away from their hometowns to take advantage of wartime opportunities, but many more remained in place, organizing home front initiatives to conserve resources, to build morale, to raise funds, and to fill jobs left by men who entered military service. More than seven million women who had not been wage earners before the war joined eleven million women already in the American work force. Over three hundred fifty thousand women volunteered for military service, while twenty times as many stepped into civilian jobs, including positions previously closed to them. The Second World War changed the United States for women, and women in turn transformed their nation. ![]()
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