These campaigns worked, as female employment saw a sharp increase during World War II. While the increase was seen across multiple industries, no industry felt a change quite like the Aviation industry. In 1943, over 300,000 women worked in the aviation industry, making up about 65% of its workforce. In contrast, women only made up 1% of the aviation workforce before the war began.
Many women also started to work in the military. While women weren't allowed to serve in combat
roles, a large number of women still worked non-combat roles. At the insistence of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Women's Auxiliary Corps (WAC) was created. By 1945, the Women's Auxiliary Corps had over 100,000 members serving in over 200 different non-combatant jobs.
World War II served as a major turning point for women's rights, as it showed that women were clearly able to work as efficiently on the same jobs as men. However, not everything was perfect. Despite their increased participation in the workforce, women still earned about 50% of what men made at the time. Regardless of pay gaps, World War II allowed women to take a major step into the workplace and paved the way for them to get more rights later on.
Great post Charles. I wrote a blog post about a similar topic and the most interesting thing that I found while researching was that many women were forced to quit their jobs after the war so that the returning veterans would have jobs, even though 75% of women reported they wanted to continue working.
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