During the ‘Golden Age’ of industrial Capitalism in the historical period after World War II, a substantial share of women were excluded from formal employment in many western European societies. In the early 1970s a steady growth in women’s employment started nearly everywhere in Western Europe. However, this rise largely came to a stop during the economic recession of the early 1990s. This paper challenges a common assumption based on a functionalist argument, which is that women’s integration into postwar capitalism was based on the integration of non-employed housewives into the employment system. It introduces a theoretical framework that is based on the assumption that capitalism does not determine the development of women’s employment. It argues that women’s employment can take different trajectories in capitalist societies and that it is therefore also possible to assume that women’s introduction into capitalism took different development paths. It argues, that besides the trajectory that can be characterized as “introduction of housewives into the employment system”, another trajectory was historically relevant that can be described as “restructuring of women’s employment”. The paper explains the differences between both development paths on the basis of differences in the main forms of women’s social integration in the historical situation before the increase in women’s employment rate started, and with differences in the relevant factors that have promoted the change. On the basis of a comparative case study for West Germany and for Finland, the paper analyses the differences between the different trajectories of women’s integration into postwar capitalism in both countries, and the reason for the differences. The empirical study is based on a combination of different methods, which include data from public statistics and national and international surveys, document analysis and secondary analysis of empirical studies. The findings show that the differences between the trajectories can mainly be explained by differences in women’s integration into society before the change, and with differences in the role of culture and welfare state policies in the historical processes.