Shortly after World War II there was a shift to neoliberalism. This is the idea that less regulation is the stimulant that an economy needs. Companies are able to pay whatever they want and since these women were desperate for jobs, they would take what they could get. This combination allows companies to take advantage and get cheap labor while many men were at war. This also had an effect across racial boundaries. Racial, gender and class differences were partially ignored so that the market would become more unified. These companies couldn’t afford to look at these differences as qualifications (ACR). This meant that, as companies needed jobs, race played less of a part in hiring. However, that does not mean that these jobs were compensated for fairly. Companies saw this as an opportunity to get cheap labor from a group that otherwise may not have had a chance to work at all. This at first seems to be a positive for both women and African-Americans because it created a boom in jobs for these two formerly overlooked groups to be employed. However, when fully understood, one can see that these jobs were unfairly compensated.  

The post-war society made a huge impact on the plastic industry. Ramskjaer argues that new innovations in the field of polymers in the 1930’s, created a sort of “plastic revolution”. There was a large demand for plastic goods in many countries such as Norway. Many companies in countries outside of the major powers during the war relied on the transfer of foreign countries’ technologies (Ramskjaer). This shows that, while there was significant trade among the powers of the war, this created more separation between them and the lesser countries that were unable to make technological advances in this area.

Even later on there were efforts to lower this boundary by groups such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT.  As stated by Ellwood, the GATT’s “aim was to reduce national trade barriers and to stop the beggar-thy-neighbor policies that had so hobbled the global economy prior to World War Two” (Ellwood, 38). The GATT is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Their goal was in line with neoliberal policies in that it reduced restrictions on trade and tariffs. This allowed a more competitive global market that allowed companies to grow over seas along with their local markets. In the world of plastics this meant that even if not affected directly, plastic was commonly used in packaging of traded goods. With the lower tariffs on imports of many different products around the world, this also meant that packaging costs could be lowered. It also affected plastic directly. In the late 1970’s “the final result [was] a tariff agreement with average cuts on plastics for all the industrialized countries” (Christopher, 78). So, the GATT largely affected plastic in many different ways. This was to the benefit of the consumer as its prices were lowered significantly. This led to growth in the industry that has persisted until today.