- Trackwomen on the Baltimore & Ohio, 1943. The wartime manpower shortage opened more jobs of more kinds to women than ever before. Employers hired Black women, over-35’s, and married women—3 groups previously barred from most offices and industries. About 90% of Black working women were domestics or farm workers before the war, but 18% worked in factories by war's end, and those on farms were halved. Page 203 →Equal pay and promotions were decreed by new laws, but these were not fully enforced, especially for Blacks and older women. However, wages and opportunities were better than ever before. Peacetime put more than 2 million women in nontraditional jobs out of work, but most found other jobs in the postwar boom, contrary to all predictions—even their own.
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