Women in Twentieth-Century Britain

Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina

doi:10.4324/9781315838458

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…However, unlike many such women, the material attractions of the affluent society played little role in their decision to work. 90 Meeting basic standards of material comfort was the overriding goal.…”

Section: Radical Motherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left Activism, Succour and Selfhood: the epistolary friendship of two revolutionary mothers in 1970s Britain

Hughes¹

2014

Women's History Review

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Section: Radical Motherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left Activism, Succour and Selfhood: the epistolary friendship of two revolutionary mothers in 1970s Britain

Hughes¹

2014

Women's History Review

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“…28 However, as there were over 1,400 local Food Control Committees alone throughout the country, the Guild was hugely outnumbered by non-co-operators. 29 As late as February 1942 at a rally in Bradford, Mrs Thirlwell complained about how the WCG 'ought to have been leading the way instead of being the tail end of war-time committees as many guildswomen are'. 30 Some leaders of the Guild tried hard to convince members that participation was ethically justified, including Cecily Cook (1890-1962), the general secretary of the WCG, who reassured them that 'Women were bound to do all sorts of things called for by the war.…”

Section: The Wcg and The Home Frontmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redefining ‘the woman with the basket’: The Women's Co‐operative Guild and the Politics of Consumption in Britain during the Second World War

Gurney¹

2019

Gender & History

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Over recent decades, historians of gender have transformed our understanding of the impact of total war on British society. Feminist scholars in particular have been drawn to this field of research because, as Margaret and Patrice Higonnet suggested in an influential essay, war 'crystallizes contradictions between ideology and actual experience'. 1 Mass mobilisation necessitated by total war blurred boundaries between military and home fronts and between men and women. Dominant conceptions of gender roles were put under intense pressure, making possible greater awareness of their constructed and hence malleable nature. 2 Understandably, women who experienced the most dramatic change have attracted the most scholarly attention; women in uniform, for example, who threatened to destabilise definitions of gender that conceived of the soldier as the epitome of masculinity. 3 Women conscripted into the paid labour force were often called upon to perform the physically demanding or skilled tasks that historically had been bound up with ideas of masculinity, and these too have been subjected to detailed investigation. 4 Running through both these historiographical strands is an interest in memory; little wonder as the full range of women's experience has been marginalised if not effaced from public memory. Oral historians have addressed this lacuna by attending to women's own narratives of their experience of industrial and military mobilisation. 5 Knowledge of the way in which war shaped the activities and ideology of feminist groups and women's voluntary organisations, which sought to expand female notions of citizenship particularly during the Second World War, has also been significantly elucidated by studies of bodies such as the Women's Institute (WI), the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS) and Townswomen's Guilds. 6 The working-class housewife, however, remains at best a shadowy presence in this literature, despite some useful leads concerning individual attitudes. 7 Their agency is also underplayed by those social historians who have explored wartime austerity, including the effects on ordinary consumers of rationing and the black market. 8 For sure, recovering the experience of a protean category that has left no straightforward

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“…As Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska demonstrates, consumption strategies amongst women, even during the war, were far more complex and unpredictable than any government might have been able to plan for. 56 The following examples suggest how these strategies undermined the neighbourhood's conflation of social interaction with shopping habits.…”

Section: Where the Politics Of Necessity Meets Consumerismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consuming communities: the neighbourhood unit and the role of retail spaces on British housing estates, 1944–1958

Greenhalgh

2015

Urban History

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the socio-spatial schema that lay at the heart of the neighbourhood principle. Planners saw shops as a hub of face-to-face interaction, through which nebulous objectives like 'community spirit' might be engendered. However, planners did not account for the way that their need-based model of shopping might be undermined by the consumer habits of inhabitants and the changing objectives of retailers.In 1944, advice emanating from both the state and town planners advocated the adoption of the 'neighbourhood unit' as a model for housing design in Britain.

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Women in Twentieth-Century Britain

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Left Activism, Succour and Selfhood: the epistolary friendship of two revolutionary mothers in 1970s Britain

Left Activism, Succour and Selfhood: the epistolary friendship of two revolutionary mothers in 1970s Britain

Redefining ‘the woman with the basket’: The Women's Co‐operative Guild and the Politics of Consumption in Britain during the Second World War

Consuming communities: the neighbourhood unit and the role of retail spaces on British housing estates, 1944–1958

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