Why do you suppose none of the women’s parents want them to have careers outside the home?
I think it comes back to the generations and how they dealt with the upheaval of the wars. The older generations wanted things to go back to how they remembered them from before the war, whereas the younger generations could feel that the world was changing and they urgently wanted to be a part of that. Especially for women in the upper class, or even upper middle class, having a job outside the home just wasn’t the “done” thing before the war, so they wanted their daughters to have the same opportunity for a “comfortable” life that they had wanted for themselves, before they were thrust into a world where everything was turned on its head.
It was expected, at the time, that young women would marry within their social class, then keep things tidy at home and keep her husband happy. Times were changing and women were looking to offer more to the world than homemaking. I think all of these young women had their own reasons for wanting to “ prove themselves” outside the home, perhaps Fern the most.