In the United States and Britain, the war provided an opportunity for huge numbers of women to enter the labor force, where they assumed positions of responsibility in the factories and unions. In the fascist states, no comparable movement took place and women were discouraged from entering the economy.
In the States, women filled the bulk of jobs freed by men leaving to serve in the armed forces. Many who did not enter factories took positions in military auxiliary organizations like the WACS or WAAFS. Because of protective hiring practices, essentially 100% of the women who started in factories joined unions, and in some of these, they rapidly assumed leadership positions. This was particularly true in the United Electrical Workers (UE), perhaps because of the relatively strong communist influence in that union.
Most of these jobs evaporated after the war, when returning soldiers were rehired for their old jobs and women returned to more traditional social roles.
In the fascist states, Nazi Germany in particular, women were relegated to the raising of families, and "Kinder, Kueche, Kirche," as the slogans would have it. The propagation of Aryan bloodlines took precedent over more traditional social goals, and even pregnancies out of wedlock were condoned among the 'racially pure.' Little effort was made to motivate women to take up the roles that soldiers had left behind, and generous compensation to women with husbands in the army eliminated financial reasons to do so.
In the Soviet Union, the participation of women in the work force had been a matter of long-standing pride by the communist party. In the war, this was taken to new levels, and women climbed to over 50% of the work force.
The long term value of these changes is elusive. In the United States, the womens' movement disappeared until the late-1960s and early-1970s. Some might argue that this generation, the daughters of the working women of WWII, had been prepared for the struggle for equal opportunity by their childhood exposure women in the workplace. This proposition is difficult to test.
taken from an essay I wrote for Historical Studies B-54 in November 1991.