Before the 1940's your average woman would be at home taking care of the household chores and preparing diner for the family. The women make sure that when her husband and family returned that dinner was on the table and the house was clean. The men would work all day and make the household income. In the late 1930's early 1940's the role of women changed dramatically. The world was going to war again and unfortuntly the world was all but ready. However had this war never had taken place women may still be in the kitchen today. The majority of men were called upon to fight for their country and knowing that you can't be two places at once the question of who would run the factory's, bussiness and all the things the men were doing before hand arose. This is where the women come in.
Women took the place of men completley. They were working in factories, shipyards, lumbermills, steelmills, and foundries. Women were going crazy, they were testing the boundries and taking the best of their known abilities and taking them to the highest of their unknown. Women let their minds expand and it wasn't long that the society realized that women too, had extradinary abilities. " Then, too, there was my belief that now and then women should do for themselves what men have already done and occasionally what men have not done thereby establishing them selves as persons, and perhaps encouraging other women toward greater independence of thought and action" Women worked as welders, electricians, mechanics, boilermakers, engineers, doctors, physics, chemists, nurses, and many other occupations. Over 3 million women served at Red Cross. By the end of WW II, Americas wartime production reached it's highest point ever! Production records include 296,429 airplanes, 10,351 tanks and self-propelled guns, 372,431 artillery pieces, 47 tons of artillery ammunition, 87,620 warships, 44 billion rounds of small arms ammunition.