This paper explores the factors contributing to women’s exclusion from the labor market in socialist Yugoslavia during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, alongside their increasing participation in labor migration. Drawing on archival materials from Yugoslav governmental, advisory, and sociopolitical institutions, as well as key empirical studies on women’s social status in the socialist period, the analysis suggests a strong correlation between prevailing social structures and the forces shaping women’s limited educational and occupational opportunities. These dynamics appear to have led to widespread exclusion from the formal labor market and a rapid incorporation into labor migration. The paper suggests that the tension between systemic barriers to women’s access to broader and diverse educational and professional paths and the state’s labor migration policies have compelled many women in postwar Yugoslavia to either remain unemployed or seek work abroad.