[branon]

Ah, is that why... I noticed this too but assumed it was due to some communist ideal of gender equality leading to more women tradespeople, wishful thinking I guess

[Cider9986]

You saw it in the US during the two world wars. Women got more rights and there was some interesting propaganda encouraging women to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter

[teachrdan]

Fun fact: The version Normal Rockwell painted shows Rosie stepping on a copy of Mein Kampf. Good times!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RosieTheRiveter.jpg

[throw-the-towel]

The poorer the country, the more women work in traditionally male fields. In Bolivia and in Peru, I was surprised to see many women working in construction and driving taxis.

[flextheruler]

If not for the war or other legitimate reasons I'd assume a preponderance of one demographic doing a specific job as likely a bad thing. I'm surprised it'd be wishful thinking.

[branon]

From the two pictures I hadn't inferred that it was specifically a preponderance, hence naïveté of my original conclusion

[konart]

Both. But mostly the war.

[Alive-in-2025]

I was expecting to find out that lots of men killed in the war led to many more women working after the war, and that's what could be interpreted/guessed from these pictures.

But looking at wikipedia, it's complicated. A lot of different estimates of deaths. I think a lot more men died in ww2 in the Soviet military, from Wikipedia, about 20 million men (see total war deaths by age group table) and 6 million women. The official counts of the dead were supposed to have underreported deaths by a lot.

Looking at different estimates in wiki, about 10 million military dead and almost 20 million civilian dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the...

[rjsw]

I would suggest that the male deaths will have been concentrated in a smaller age range than the female ones.