LibGuides: Women in the Military - WWII: Overview (2024)

FAQs

What was the main role of women in the military during WWII? ›

Women in uniform performed more than 200 different jobs during their service. They were clerks, mechanics, pilots, drivers, gunnery instructors, air traffic controllers, weather forecasters, postal workers, and translators. They served at home and abroad. Many of them risked their lives and safety.

Women's auxiliary branches were created for every branch of the military, including the Women's Army Corps (WAC), Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Women were restricted from combat zones; however, many became nurses to help the men injured in combat.

Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women's Army Corps or WAC), the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), and. the Women Accepted for Volunteer Military Services (WAVES).

The burden of WWII finally convinced the U.S. to accept female pilots into the. military. A larger production of planes needed a greater increase of trained pilots to fly. them, so women were called to fill these roles.

Millions of women did work in shipyards and factories during World War II. They labored as welders, machinists, and (of course) riveters. Women also drove trucks, cleaned houses, flew planes, organized fundraisers, treated patients, grew crops, broke codes, and took care of children.

As the men fought abroad, women on the Home Front worked in defense plants and volunteered for war-related organizations, in addition to managing their households. In New Orleans, as the demand for public transportation grew, women even became streetcar “conductorettes” for the first time.

Employers attempted to preserve a measure of the prewar gender order by separating male and female workers and paying women less wages. Many Americans were also troubled by women who earned their own wages and spent time away from the supervision of family.

The United States, by comparison, elected not to use women in combat because public opinion would not tolerate it. Instead, as in other nations, about 350,000 women served as uniformed auxiliaries in non-combat roles in the U.S. armed forces.

With men away to serve in the military and demands for war material increasing, manufacturing jobs opened up to women and upped their earning power. Yet women's employment was only encouraged as long as the war was on. Once the war was over, federal and civilian policies replaced women workers with men.

Rosie the Riveter is the symbol for all the women that worked in the war industry during the Second World War. As the men went to the front, hundreds of thousands of women took their places in the factories and with their tireless efforts contributed greatly to the Allied victory.

Who was the only female POW in ww2? ›

Reba Zitella Whittle was World War II's only American female military person to be held as a prisoner of war in all of the European Theater.

The aviation industry saw the greatest increase in female workers. By 1943, 310,000 women worked in the aircraft industry, representing 65 percent of the industry's total workforce.

Women worked in different roles throughout the military, serving as mechanics on training bases, pilots transporting military planes, and postal workers delivering overseas mail. Women also continued to serve as nurses in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps.

Nancy Wake (1912–2011), aka 'Madame Andrée' and codenamed 'White Mouse' and 'Witch', was the most decorated servicewoman of World War II.

During World War II, approximately 350,000 U.S. women served with the armed forces. As many as 543 died in war-related incidents, including 16 nurses who were killed from enemy fire - even though U.S. political and military leaders had decided not to use women in combat because they feared public opinion.

The Women's Army Corps (WAC) was the women's branch of the United States Army, created during World War II. One hundred and fifty thousand women served in the WAC during the war. Their noncombat jobs ranged from switchboard operators to mechanics to bakers and beyond.

During WWII, women's Jobs shifted to traditionally male positions. They worked in defense plants and factories. Produced munitions, built ships and airplanes. Also jobs such as air-raid wardens, fire officers, evacuation officers, drivers of fire engines, trains, and trams, conductors, and nurses.

They served as stenographers, clerks, radio operators, messengers, truck drivers, ordnance workers, mechanics cryptographers and all other non-combat shore duty roles, free thousands of sailors to join the fleet. In all 11,272 Women joined the US Navy for the duration of the war.

Both organizations were created to free up male pilots for combat roles in WWII, while female pilots tested and ferried aircraft, trained male cadets (including towing targets for cadets to target with live ammunition), and performed whatever other flying duties the Army Air Corps had need for at the time.