In the s, the role of women in society shifted dramatically. Women liberated themselves. They started working outside the house, engaging in activities previously reserved to men, they discovered their sexuality and sensuality and uncovered their body. This was a common occurrence throughout the Western World β with reaches outside of it β but it had peculiar characteristic in every single nation.
In Germany, women had to fend for themselves through the years of war, and they continued to do so after the war ended. Before the war, only few women worked outside the house, mostly working-class women employed in the factories or in domestic service. But during the war, women had to replace men in many jobs, and slowly it became something which was considered acceptable, even desirable.
After the war, work was seen by all women, especially young ones, and a means of realization and self-determination. Women of all classes entered the workforce, and even if they were mostly employed in what became known as female occupations teachers, nurses, social workers. But they also started to enter the professions and fields previously considered eminently male. The postwar decrease in demographics, especially among men, certainly helped here.
They started being visible as they became bus conductors, postwomen, doctors and lawyers. Women were the majority of the electorate in postwar Germany, a result of the many men who had died in the war, but also of the number of veterans who, injured both physically and mentally, were unlikely to vote.
No political party could afford to ignore them. As in many other Western countries, the s brought about a sexual liberation for women, facilitated by the advancement in birth control, the willingness of both women and men to use those methods and the aspiration of women to a personal realisation before dedicating themselves to the family.
