Women's lives changed severely during the Second World War, as they found their roles and opportunities expanded. Husbands went to war or moved in other parts of the country to work in factories and the wives had to take their husbands' responsibilities. Women filled a series of jobs traditionally occupied by men because there were fewer men available in workforces.
Women everywhere had won the right to vote by the 1960s, with the only exceptions being Switzerland and several Islamic states. This is particularly worrying, when considering that Switzerland was a developed country at the time. However, it is explainable through the fact that the country was neutral during the war, and, thus, the men there were involved in most fights that the rest of Europe was involved in. However, these changes did not have immediate significant repercussions on women's situation, not even in the countries where voting had political effects. From the 1960s we find a striking revival of feminism: firstly in wealthy western countries, into the elites of educated women, and, more slowly, in the socialist world.
Married women generally found themselves responsible with old household work and new wage-earning work without any changes in public or private relations between sexes. The reasons why women plunged into...
In fact, because of the income and status of the feminized professions (mostly in USSR), married women dreamed of the luxury of staying home and taking care of children.
The labor market was virtually flooded with women in the second half of the twentieth century, as more and more individuals started to get actively involved in the general society. Labor markets did not actually consider that women was unfit to occupy jobs that were previously characteristic to men, as women were known to be "traditionally less well-paid and less rebellious than male hands" (Hobsbawm, 311). A growing number of women started to get involved in attending educational institutes and even to surpass men when it came to experience and talent.
Evans, Amanda. "Empowerment of American Minorities in the Wake of WWII," Retrieved May 2, 2011, from the Youbetiam Website: http://www.youbetiam.com/index_files/Page4195.htm
Hobsbawm, Eric J. Age of extremes: the short twentieth century, 1914-1991, (Michael Joseph, 1994).
Taylor Allen, Ann, Women in twentieth-century Europe, Palgrave (Macmillan, 2008).
