America's entry into World War II posed opportunities for American women domestically, yet paradoxically heightened fears in the polity about the exact role that women should adopt during wartime. A central issue that dominated women's lives during this period was how to combine the private sphere of the home, with the new demands of the war economy in the public sphere. Women made significant gains in the military, the war economy and in some cases, in terms of political influence. Yet these gains were misleading for policy makers utilised the female workforce for short-term gains during war, with a long-term goal of seeing women return to the domestic sphere and reinforcing traditional gender roles. Significantly also, American women encountered different experiences of life during World War II since factors such as ethnicity and class largely shaped how women responded to, or were affected by the Second World War.

Owing to the critical demand for labour, employers during the war helped to break down traditional gender roles by recruiting women to traditionally male jobs. Government, industry and the media all encouraged women t

When WAAC was formed in 1942, women faced difficulties with their male superiors, for as General George Marshall later reflected, women in the military encountered: " a great reluctance of army officers generally, particularly those in high control, to the interjection of a female organization." The recruitment of women in the military was based more on the general wartime strategy of " maximum utilization of manpower, technology and industrial capacity" , rather than any genuine attempts to advance women's rights in American society. Neither did military reform undermine the ongoing racism that black women faced, for black nurses served in segregated military camps during the war.

Although race and class divided American women during the war , women found consensus in the fact that direct representation in Washington was the key to securing the political needs of American women. Organisations like the League of Women Voters (LWV) focused more on the needs of professional women than the needs of working class or black women , to reinforce the view that middle class women dominated wartime politics more than any other group. The wartime shortage of men made women valuable campaign workers and as activists it has been asserted that this was " quickened when the need for womanpower during World War II increased the importance of women's public roles." The Second World War then , can be seen as a turning point for women in terms of political influence, although the downside to this was that privileged, professional women gained more from the political process than working class or minority women did.

o serve their patriotic duty by taking a job. Throughout the war however, policy makers sent out ambiguous messages to women about what their "proper" role in American society was. The motive behind this ambiguity rested in the fact that the government feared that the long-term consequences of women in the workplace, since gender roles could permanently be disrupted if women became reluctant to return to the domestic sphere when men returned from war. Many governmental agencies aimed to hinder sweeping changes for American women during the war- particular attention was placed on women in the military. Business associations largely worked independently from the polity, and tensions emerged when women's organisations highlighted the discriminiatory practices of employers. Unions were also a highly important source of oppression to American women, for men feared that women would gain too much power if...Gender AND WORK BOOK. Moreover, the social and political fear of women in the workplace was largely confusing anyway, for women had worked outside the home in huge numbers ever since the Depression.

Conflict surfaced as to the exact role that women were to undertake in the military. Women's corps undermined conventional wisdom about a woman's "natural" role. Thus, propaganda played a large role in limiting the significance of women in the military for war films emphasised that the army needed women's "delicate hands" and required women in hospital work because " there is a need in a man for comfort and attention that only a woman can fill." After World War II returning servicewomen did not recieve a hero's welcome in the way that men did, and unlike men, women were denied veterans preference after the war. This evidence would seem to give credence to the contention that the government was responsive to women's demands during the war because every citizen was perceived as valuable in the war effort, but that once the war ended and men returned, traditional gender views were re-established.

The Women's Bureau responded to stating that it made sense to cater for a huge pool of the workforce by implementing child care facilities, and throughout the war, childcare facilities were woefully inadequate. Government policy conveniently endorsed a Children's Bureau report which linked c

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