Women Workers After the War

Report Outline
War and Postwar Employement of Woman
Wartime Changes in Employment of Women
Future Prospects for Women Workers
Special Focus

War and Postwar Employement of Woman

Not the Least of the problems of readjustment facing the nation after the war will be the return to peacetime pursuits of the millions of women now employed in war industries. The extent to which women seek to hold the places in industry they have gained during the war will directly affect the postwar labor market in general, the national economy as a whole, and future developments in the country's social organization.

Predictions as to the number of women who will voluntarily withdraw from the labor market when the emergency has passed show wide variations. The Women's Advisory Committee of the War Manpower Commission believes that “a relatively small proportion” will relinquish their status as wage-earners, but Secretary of Labor Perkins foresees a sharp reduction in the number of women gainfully employed, because “many women now at work will leave their jobs to retire, to go back to school or to return to the homes they left for patriotic reasons.”

Women Workers in the Postwar Economy

All estimates of the number of women who will remain in the postwar labor force are subject to modification should the war be unduly prolonged, and a considerably larger number of women be recruited or conscripted for war jobs. No degree of wartime increase, however, will change the fact that the women recently brought into the labor market will continue to be a relatively small proportion of the total number of women normally employed in American industry.