Politically, there were limitations:
- Women were not involved in wartime decision-making on the home front or about the aims and methods of war.
- The New Deal practice of government agencies being dominated by men in top managerial positions continued.
- Women were unable to secure the type of support for working women in the form of childcare and cheap restaurants or canteens
- that British working women achieved during the war.
- They were still expected to combine domestic responsibilities with the most tiring and demanding work.
- Women had to accept unequal pay.
- Despite having an organisation called the National Council of Negro Women, there was little consultation with African American
- women and little opportunity for them to join the armed forces or take on managerial roles.
- Because of the harsh treatment of the Japanese community after Pearl Harbor, life for Japanese American women became hard and
- there was confinement and discrimination. Some Japanese people were put on wartime reservations ‘internments’ out of fear.
Women remained with little real influence in the political parties.
Women remained divided. Even in wartime, conservative women’s groups did not support greater help for working mothers or equality of opportunity, believing that the war should not erode traditional family values.