Women of the Second World War When we talk about the role of women, the initial thought goes to things done at home, to their unpaid domestic work. But women actually played a vital role in their country's success in World War II. The war began a new era for women's opportunities to contribute to the country. By 1945, over 2.2 million women worked in the war industries, building ships, weapons, and planes. Women also worked in factories, farms, munitions plants, drove trucks, and entered specialized work areas that were previously reserved. to men. Thousands of women had signed up as nurses and messengers to help on the front lines. Although they contributed, women were not positively affected by World War II. For example, women's equality, stereotypes and female employment. During the Second World War there were no real positive changes in the status of women. Women's opportunities and lifestyles were negatively affected due to the inequalities women faced in the workplace. The wage gap in the years following World War II was obviously smaller than that of men. This was the 1980s when women earned only sixty-four cents to a man's dollar. Even as laws went into effect such as the Equal Pays Act in 1963, there were still wage inequities. It did little in changing the status of women as women were still not viewed equally as men. Women were kept as a cheap labor force because society thought that the insignificance of women's work would be threatened if women and men shared the same jobs. To ensure the continuation of cheap women's labor, they were confined to certain jobs that became known as "women's occupations." This gender segregation further asserted that women's work was less important, therefore appropriate for paper work, economic battles, and stereotyped lifestyles within the social order. After the war, women had suffered unfair compensation, post-war job losses, and calls for a return to the old unchanged ways by government propaganda. Consequently, these statements confirm that women are capable of great things, but their place in society has not been positively affected by the end of the Second War. At the end of the war there were 460,000 women in the army and 6.5 million in civilian work. Unfortunately it wasn't until the 1960s that we saw real, tangible changes for women. Without the contribution of women on the home front there may have been no chance of winning the war. In the end, it seemed that the country ignored the fact that there was once a time when women were necessary and formed the main basis for the country's triumph..