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Women at War, Part I:
In the Workforce
By Blaine Taylor
W
orking women played a vital part in the American war
effort, just as they had in the First World War, but in far
greater numbers. With the war in full swing, servicemen’s
wives generally returned to their parents’ homes because of an acute
housing shortage that didn’t abate until the market boom of 1948.
Loneliness and long periods of separation affected companionship-based
unions. Surprisingly, though, US domestic divorce rates fluctuated little
during the war years from the prewar years, from 26 percent just before
the war to 27 percent during and immediately after, until the late 1940s.
The wartime and postwar baby boom began in 1940 and only
ended in 1965. During 1940-42, the first-child birth rate went from 293
per 10,000 females to 375, with the rate for subsequent births going from
506 to 540. That increase was found among all groups of reproductive-age
women, but was found to be greatest among the most educated, who had
both the best resources and most opportunity to control their lives.
Female quality control inspectors check the plexiglass nose cones of US Army Air Corps aircraft. (USNA.)
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WORLD at WAR 40 | FEB – MAR 2015
WORLD at WAR 40 | FEB – MAR 2015
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A female cadet (center) takes part in a team competition during USMA summer training at West Point in the
Seventies. As of 2015 there are female generals in the American military. (USMA West Point).
Longstanding prohibitions
against married women working were
dropped in favor of boosting the war
effort and, for the first time, large numbers of mothers entered the workforce.
That was true despite the traditional
social more that women should focus
on home-building and childrearing.
Meanwhile, in the industrial
workplace, two different types of jobs
opened for women. First, there
was the direct replacement of
men in long-standing occupations. Second, there were the 90
percent of the jobs in the munitions
industry that were entirely new.
The actual replacement of men
with women came only after negotiations and compromises with unions,
with those organizations officially
taking the stance women were only
temporary replacements. Even so,
the women were paid the same as the
men they replaced, even if only so that
pay would remain the same after the
war, when it was expected the men
would return to their former posts.
Most women replacement workers
weren’t in munitions plants; rather,
they were in office and other factory
Standing in place of men filled several
categories of vital jobs, as seen here in the
wartime painting Calship Burner, done
at Wilmington, CA, 1943, by artist Edna
Reindel. (US Army Combat Art Collection.)
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WORLD at WAR 40 | FEB – MAR 2015
Black females also found work in US wartime manufacturing plants. (USNA.)
positions, and most of them were
non-union. Thus the overall workforce
became notably more feminine,
particularly in the white collar sector.
After World War II, 4.1 million
American women left the labor force,
with 50 percent telling census takers
they were returning to their homes to
raise their families. Another 18 percent
reported they did so because of
insistence by their husbands. Thirteen
percent gave age or disability as the
compelling factors, while 11 percent
returned to school or to a farm. ✪
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SELECTED SOURCES
Brayley, Martin. World War II Allied Women’s Services.
Osprey, 2001.
Cassin-Scott, Jack. Women at War, 1939-45. Osprey, 2001.
Goldstein, Joshua S. War and Gender. Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2007.
Smith, Jill Halcomb. Dressed for Duty: America’s Women
in Uniform, 1898-1973. R. James Bender Publishing,
2001.
shop.decisiongames.com
WORLD at WAR 40 | FEB – MAR 2015
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This photo, supposedly showing a
Soviet infantrywoman late in the
war, may be a recent fake.
American interrogators questioning some recently captured members of the Luftwaffe’s female auxiliary early in 1945.
Women at War, Part II:
In Uniform
By Joel Kindrick
T
he Soviet Union, Great
Britain, France, Germany,
Japan and the US each had
unique political, institutional and
cultural challenges that determined
how women were accepted in uniform
during World War II. Each of those
countries’ governments made decisions about placing women in harm’s
way. Among them, the Soviet Union
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did the most in terms of assimilating
women into the military and combat
roles within it, and the US did the least.
Since the start of World War I the
Russians had been through two revolutions, a civil war, and series of political
purges and executions lasting until
the beginning of World War II. It was
in that way already a society exposed
to war and mass violence. Though the
WORLD at WAR 40 | FEB – MAR 2015
USSR didn’t have in place a plan for
the large-scale military mobilization
of women when the Germans invaded
on 22 June 1941, tens of thousands
of females immediately volunteered.
By war’s end a million Soviet females
had participated, half of them in roles
that took them to the combat front.
As in other combatant countries,
Soviet women were also involved in
auxiliary services such as signals, traffic control, medical, kitchen, clerical
and administrative work. Unlike other
countries, however, Soviet women were
often directly involved in combat. For
example, the air force started three allfemale combat regiments fully staffed
in that way with pilots, mechanics,
bomb loaders and other personnel.
Even though most women in the
Soviet military weren’t combatants,
they were all trained to use weapons,
and those who did use them did so
effectively. A platoon of 50 female
snipers was in Third Shock Army,
led by Nina Lobkovskaia, and the
unit was credited with 3,112 kills.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko was the most
famous female sniper, with 309 kills.
Women also served as scouts,
machinegunners and sappers.
In some cases women were even
placed in command over men,
as was the situation with Klavdia
Konovalova, who found herself made
commander of a gun crew consisting
of two women and four men.
Great Britain, like the Soviets,
had partially included women in the
First World War, but had only gotten
as far as home-country factory jobs
and an auxiliary corps that served as
nurses and ambulance drivers. British
conceptions of the inappropriateness
of females in combat changed only
slightly in the Second World War. In
preparation for that new war, Britain
had formed the Auxiliary Territorial
About a million Soviet women, 500,000 British women (including Queen Elizabeth II), 200,000
American women, and tens of thousands from other Allied nations served in uniform. (USNA.)
Service (ATS) in 1938 as a female
auxiliary to the military. In 1941 those
women were elevated to full military
status—meaning they received military
pay, but only at two-thirds of the
rates men of equal rank received.
The commander of Britain’s
anti-aircraft (AA) defenses, Gen. Sir
Frederick Pile, seeing the need for
and enthusiasm of female recruits,
convinced the government to
deploy women within AA units in
England. Prime Minister Winston
Churchill supported the program
WORLD at WAR 40 | FEB – MAR 2015
and stated any general who could,
in effect, provide the country with
40,000 additional “fighting men”
had accomplished a great feat.
On 25 April 1941 regulations were
passed that allowed women to enter
the AA. Because male soldiers were
generally perceived as being wary of
serving with females, it was decided
mixed-sex units would be set up
only with completely new recruits
from both sides of that divide. The
assumption was, men who hadn’t
yet been in the service wouldn’t
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