As impressive as these figures are, they do not tell the whole story. First, although married women entered the job market in record numbers, most of these workers were older and without young children. Women over the age of thirty-five accounted for 60 percent of those entering the workforce. The government did little to encourage young mothers to work, and few efforts were made to provide assistance for child care for those who did. One notable exception was the Kaiser Corporation shipyards, which operated child care facilities twenty-four hours a day. In contrast to this situation, in Great Britain child care programs were widely available. Second, openings for women in manufacturing jobs did not guarantee equality. Women received lower wages for work comparable to the work that men performed, and women did not have the same chances for advancement. Typical union benefits, such as seniority, hurt women, who were generally the most recent hires. In fact, some contracts stipulated that women’s tenure in jobs previously held by men would last only for the duration of the war.

Gender stereotypes continued to dominate the workforce and society in general. Magazine covers with the image of “Rosie the Riveter,” a woman with her sleeves rolled up and her biceps bulging, became a symbol for the recruitment of women, but reality proved different. The government, private employers, and mass media advertised for women workers by adapting traditional views of women to their new roles. One piece of literature suggested that an overhead crane operated “just like a gigantic clothes wringer” and that winding wire spools was very much like crocheting. Women who took war jobs were viewed not so much as war workers but as women temporarily occupying “men’s jobs” during the emergency. As the war drew to a close, public relations campaigns shifted gears and encouraged the same women they had recently recruited to prepare to return home.