Nardi the female pilot boom of WW2 was 'tolerated' because there was just not enough men to ferry the aircraft from A-B.
That women were VERY good at it probably surprised the male powers that be...I can just imagine the relief the pollies and Generals felt when the WASPs so successfully contributed to the war effort.
It wasn't just the lady pilots who, mostly, ended up back in the kitchens bare foot and pregnant post war...it was millions of women who contributed in thousands of factories etc...no doubt the war was unwinable without their contributions.
1946 was a very different time and I can well imagine that many women were more than happy to see the war won and their men home...to return to what they were bought up to believe was their rightfull role..wives and mothers.
Clearly also pandoras box had been opened and things could not return to the prewar norm no matter how badly men wanted that to be the case...I suspect too it took women a little while to realise that they were not really fullfilled back in the roles they had traditionally filled pre war....probably most women were torn between the two desires...for things to be back to 'normal' and to keep that sense of purpose/excitement that the war had exposed them to...imagine going from making fighters,bombers,tanks,bombs,bullets etc one day to "Thanks deary..off you toddle home and wait for your hero to return...oh and when he does tell him there's a job for him here."
A good mate of mine's first instructor was also a women....her picture is on the wall of the WLAC, and in numerous books on the subject...a tiny young women standing by the main wheel of the Stirling Bomber she has just delivered from the factory...she's barely taller than the wheel....early-mid 20s...imagine what a sense of achievement a women her age in that era must have felt....her chances of direct entry command to BOAC post war...absolutely fecking zero....can any of us imagine the Atlantic Barons tolerating a 5' nothing 'girl' in their midst?
Gender roles and expectations have been confused and turned upside down in the last 40 odd years....Lord knows how many 100s of years of conditioning all blown to hell...little wonder we still see attitudes of sexism.
But lets not lose sight totally of the downside to the great gender experiment we are living...for that is what it is...can anyone say society will not pay a price, some day, for leaving their kids at home alone or with strangers in a day care...'institutionalised from birth'...while both parents work for what ever reason..be it economic necesity (both real and imagined) or just plain 'I want it all...children and career'. Something has got to give...I think we see the beginnings of it now in modern youth...I think it is sad...I think the price society will pay for 'equality' will be greater than anybody can imagine...or is prepared to admit.
Probably, in light of all that has gone before, we are doing pretty darn well....for mere males.