(1) The war has drawn vast armies of women from their homes into jobs of all sorts. The number of working women has increased 25 per cent during the past three years. Today women hold one in every three civilian jobs in the country. War has given them new motives, stirred up new problems, brought about new adjustments.
(2) “There are two things I want to be sure of after the war,” writes a soldier from the South Pacific. “I want my wife waiting for me and I want my job waiting for me. I don’t want to find my wife busy with a job that some returning soldier needs, and I don’t want to find that some other man’s wife has my job.”
(3) What will men like this one actually find when they come home? Will their wives be only too glad to give up their strenuous jobs in war plants to return to the job of being homemakers? Or will they continue to work outside the home? If they must or prefer to stay at home again what will be done to make the tasks of homemaking more attractive? If a woman wants to keep on working after the war what will her husband’s attitude be? If there are no longer jobs enough for everyone should a married woman be allowed to work? Does she have as much right as her husband to try to find the work she wants? These are only a few of the questions that must be faced when the war is over.
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(4) Let’s listen in on a squabble in an American camp, behind the lines in Italy, or perhaps on an American transport. Says Pvt. Pro, glancing up from an ancient American newspaper, “Say, you know with the way prices are going up I’m going to have to send my wife out to work after the war. I may not be able to buy myself a good suit of civies to say nothing of one of those helicopters unless the wife brings home a little bacon on Saturday night.”
(5) Pvt. Con glares at Pvt. Pro, “Look here, Pro, where I come from we don’t send our wives out to work. If I can’t make enough money to support a wife, I just don’t expect to be married. My mother had plenty to do right around the house, and she didn’t take in washing either. Maybe you’re just too lazy to go and dig out a decent income. I’m not like that. I’m for the good old-fashioned way. I’ll pay for the food and the wife can cook it, and what is more, cook it the way I like it. A lot of these women who have been out trying to do a man’s job are going to be glad to go back home and be supported by some good man.”
(6) Pvt. Pro disagrees, “All right, Con, you wait and see how long it takes to save up enough money to get married on in the way you look at it. You’re not going to get any bonus that will buy a bungalow for the little woman. Furniture costs money. Of course, every girl expects to have a car. Your lady friend has probably been making big dough in a war plant and has gotten used to having a new hat once in a while. ‘When the nylons bloom again,’ she is going to want a few pairs. If you wait to do everything right, you’ll probably find that the girl won’t. Besides you’ll be too old to mow your own lawn by the time you save up enough for a house. If the girl likes to work, why stop her? You can get married sooner if there are two people to face the bill collector. A woman appreciates things a lot more if she has had something to do with paying for them. You know it’s not the Civil War but World War II that you are in. It just isn’t going to be the same kind of world when this thing is over.”
(7) Pvt. Con protests, “So you think you’ve got it all figured out. How about competition from these women that are staying on the job to support guys like you? They’re going to make it harder for me to do it my way. Maybe your wife does help out, but if enough women are out gunning for jobs you’ll get such a measly pay check that you’re right back where you were before. That’s the way it was during the depression – a man couldn’t get a job and if he did he couldn’t make enough money to support a family; there was always a woman who could afford to work just a bit cheaper. A fellow went to jail if he didn’t support his family and he couldn’t support them because some other fellow’s wife was working in an office to earn herself a fur coat.”
(8) Pvt. Pro is disgusted. “If most men thought the cockeyed way you do,” he says, “you’d expect women to get the jobs. Plenty of women can think straighter than you do. Why do you suppose a lot of women go to work during a war? To make everybody poorer? The more people you’ve got at work the more things get produced. If a wife works she’s got money to spend which creates some more jobs. She can hire a maid. She can buy an automobile and even a dumb cluck like you may get a job putting it together.”
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