WWII was a mass mobilization of US women's labor, and women entered manufacturing and the steel, automobile, and aerospace industries in unprecedented numbers; by 1944, women held one third of manufacturing jobs in the US, and women's participation in the workforce had more than doubled since 1930. At the end of the war, however, despite 86% of women saying they wished to remain in the sectors in which they worked, there were mass layoffs of the female workers, women's participation in industrial and automotive manufacturing fell below ten percent. Women's participation in the labor force in general dropped immediately after WWII. [sources: khan academy, american social history project, HERB social history]
How did this change impact women's independence? It seems to me that, despite celebration at the end of WWII, that change might have been a devastating blow to the financial and social independence of the five million women who had just entered the workforce.
There is always more to be said, but I addressed this to a certain extent in two previous answers:
What happened to female skilled labor, like Rosie the Riveter, after the conclusion of WWII?
Why did women remain in the workplace only after WWII, and not earlier in history?
I would specifically point to this paragraph from the first one:
About 6.5 million women joined the workforce in the early years of the war in response, not just in munitions manufacturing (as the stereotype goes), but in offices and shops, and in support roles in the military; working married women outnumbered working single ones by 1944. Almost immediately following the end of the war, they were dropped flat: 4.6 of the 6.5 million women mentioned before were gone by February 1946 - but contrary to the stereotype that all were forced to become housewives, by 1947 there were again more married women than single ones in the workforce (first older housewives with little work experience, and then younger mothers who left their children with sitters), and that would keep on. A certain barrier had broken down, and would not be put back even though some women didn't want to keep working.