After attaining the right to vote in German politics in 1919, German women began to take active roles in assuming positions customarily done only by German men. After the end of World War II, they were labeled as the Trümmerfrauen or "women of the rubble" because they took care of the "wounded, buried the dead, salvaged belongings," and they participated in the "hard task of rebuilding war-torn Germany by simply clearing away" the rubble and ruins of war.[5]