William H. Chafe (Essay Date 1990)

SOURCE: Chafe, William H. "World War II as a Pivotal Experience for American Women." In Women and War: The Changing Status of American Women from the 1930s to the 1940s, edited by Maria Diedrich and Dorothea Fischer-Hornung, pp. 21-34. New York: Berg, 1990.

In the following essay, Chafe provides an overview of the changes in the social and economic roles played by women during and immediately following the end of World War II.

Few areas of American life demonstrated such rapid and dramatic change during World War II as the social and economic roles of women. Just a few months before Pearl Harbor, more than 80 percent of American men and women declared that it was wrong for wives to work...