The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s

The 1940s contained developments which sharply set off that decade from the preceding one and which established patterns that would shape women's lives for some years to come. Most obviously, the Second World War transformed the economy, made unprecedented claims on men and women, and disrupted social arrangements on a broad scale.  From the vantage point of 1950 it is possible to discern how women's lives were permanently reshaped by war and economic regeneration and to understand women's own initiatives in the process of change. The focus of this studyis on women in the aggregate rather than on the unique activities or contributions of individual women. By combining research into popular media, government reports, and private essays, the author reconstructs the changing pattern of women's lives in this decade. [modified from author/publisher]