Answer:
Several hundred thousand women served in combat roles[citation needed], especially in anti-aircraft units. The Soviet Union, for example, integrated women directly into their army units. The United States, by comparison, elected not to use women in combat because public opinion would not tolerate it.[1] Instead, like in other nations, approximately 350,000 women served as uniformed auxiliaries in non-combat roles in the U.S. armed forces. These roles included: administration, nurses, truck drivers, mechanics, electricians, and auxiliary pilots.[2]
Women also took part outside of formal military structure in the resistances of France, Italy, and Poland, as well as in the British SOE and American OSS which aided these.
Women were forced into sexual slavery; the Imperial Japanese Army forced hundreds of thousands in Asia to become comfort women, before and throughout World War II.
Women in the Second World War took on many different roles during the War, including as combatants and workers on the home front. The Second World War involved global conflict on an unprecedented scale; the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population made the expansion of the role of women inevitable, although the particular roles varied from country to country. Millions of women of various ages died as a result of the war.
