The importance of women during WWII

Code Girls - Pictured: female US Army Signals Intelligence Service cryptologists at work in 1943 at Arlington Hall in Virginia.

Female cryptanalysts - Meanwhile in England, about 8,000 women were employed at Bletchley Park, the government's top-secret site for British cryptanalysts.

Women's Land Army - Created in 1917, the Women's Land Army (WLA), a British civilian organization, placed women with farms that needed workers during the Great War.

Powering the war effort - A woman concentrates on her job working on an engine at the North American Aviation (NAA) plant in California.

"Riveting Rosies" - An American female worker drives rivets into an aircraft while another sits in the cockpit checking they've been securely fastened.

Trackwomen - Here, five African-American women pause for the camera in 1943 while working with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad as trackwomen.

Dirty job - Rarely did women employed in industry during the war mind getting their hands dirty. One of the grubbiest—and most dangerous—gigs was cleaning the tops of blast furnaces.

Star employee - A female civil service worker at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Base in Texas puts the finishing touches to American insignia on the wing of US Navy aircraft.

Patriotic duty - An overtly patriotic task for American women was the sewing of the Stars and Stripes to be raised over US armed forces installations and on the battlefield.

Red Cross nurses - Red Cross nurses are seen here sewing dresses for children as part of the organization's war refugee relief program.

Canadian Women's Army Corps - The Canadian Women's Army Corps (CWAC), a non-combatant branch of the Canadian Army for women, was established in 1941.

High working standards - During the war in factories all over Canada, thousands of women were employed in small arms ammunition production.

Quality control inspector - A quality control inspector checks hundreds of Mk II Brodie helmets in a Canadian factory before the steel combat headgear is issued to combatants.

Collective effort - Elsewhere, women took to the vast steppes of the Russian countryside as collective farmers to replace men who had left for the front.

In the frame - The German war effort saw women joining the production line in factories across the country.

Tram conductor - On Germany's streets, women could be found carrying out duties on the public transport network such as this Berlin tram conductor.

Australian Women's Land Army - The Australian Women's Land Army was created in 1942 to combat rising labor shortages in the farming sector as the war progressed.

Gunning for victory - Female employees at a government munitions factory in Footscray, Victoria, feed cartridges into machine gun belts.