Hannah Prock, of Austria, prepares to start the luge women's singles run 1 at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Monday, February 7, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

British television, radio presenter and DJ Maya Jama arrives at The BRIT Awards 2022 at The O2 Arena on February 8, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)

A woman releases birds as people celebrate the start of the Lunar New Year in Surabaya on February 1, 2022, which ushers in the Year of the Tiger. (Photo by Juni Kriswanto/AFP Photo)

Botswana's Ross Branch competes during the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge stage two on March 7, 2022. (Photo by Edoardo Bauer/AFP Photo)

A public bus makes its way on a flooded road after heavy monsoon rains in Mumbai, India on August 4, 2019. India receives its monsoon rains from June to September. (Photo by Indranil Mukherjee/AFP Photo)

Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012. A third (33%) of the country's population lives below the international poverty line which means living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day.

These stunning color portraits, produced by the U.S. Office of War Information during World War II depict the role of women in the US war effort. All of the images were shot on 4x5 color transparency film by Howard R. Hollem and Alfred T. Palmer during 1942 and 1943 and were turned over to the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division in 1944. They are seen here with their original captions.