"Labor presented one of the most critical problems of World War II. This work proposes to study forces which brought women in large numbers into the defense production labor force. It seeks to show how the War Manpower Commission, the Women's Bureau, the Women's Advisory Committee, industry, management, labor, and other organizations approached the problem of labor and found the solution in the employment of women in defense jobs vacated by men called into military service. The work also proposes to show that in the war period women workers took a big step toward emancipating themselves from a kind of second-class status in American life. Through their efforts and performances as laborers in defense plants from 1942 to 1945, they were able not only to emancipate themselves economically, to destroy the myth that women's place was strictly in the home, but to bring about a psychological and sociological leveling through the democratization of labor"--Page ii.