To what extent did the role of women change as a result of the Second World War?

Unmarried middle-class women had been entering the workforce in larger numbers in the years before World War II, and of course the war itself created a massive demand for labor that women stepped up to fill. They took jobs in heavy industry that had previously been closed to women, and while they still received lower pay than men who did the same jobs, they were indispensable to the industrial machine that helped to win World War II. After the war, however, the expectation was that women, especially married women, would return to more traditional roles. Many, of course, did, but many women also stayed in the workforce, though not in many of the jobs they had formerly held. Many women also entered college, though they struggled to find professional jobs upon graduation, and the social expectation to get married and start a family proved hard to resist for many. While demographic data show that more women worked during this period, culturally, the role of women as homemakers and mothers dominated postwar society. Advertisers, television programs, and even social scientists emphasized the domestic role of women, even as more and more women found this role confining (not to mention financially unrealistic). The 1960s marked the beginning of a focused movement for women's rights, one that is often traced to the publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in 1963. Friedan, who would become a founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), argued that the gender roles prescribed for women in postwar society had left them unfulfilled, and that they needed more out of life to be emotionally satisfied.  She argued, in effect, that postwar changes had been bad for women, who ought to feel free to pursue other opportunities.