Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France [Paperback]

Examines the emergence of a citizen consumer role for women during postwar modernization and reconstruction in France.Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France examines the emergence of a citizen consumer role for women during postwar modernization and reconstruction in France, integrating the history of economic modernization with that of women and the family.Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France examines the emergence of a citizen consumer role for women during postwar modernization and reconstruction in France, integrating the history of economic modernization with that of women and the family.Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France examines the emergence of a citizen consumer role for women during postwar modernization and reconstruction in France, integrating the history of economic modernization with that of women and the family. This role both celebrated the power of the woman consumer and created a gendered form of citizenship that did not disrupt the sexual hierarchy of home, polity, and marketplace. Redefining needs and renegotiating concepts of taste, value, and thrift, women and their families drove mass consumer society through their demands and purchases at the same time that their very need to consume came to define them.Introduction; 1. Consumers for the nation: women, politics, and citizenship; 2. The productivity drive in the home and gaining comfort on credit; 3. For better and for worse: marriage and family in the consumer society; 4. 'Can a man with a refrigerator make a revolution?': redefining class in the postwar years; 5. The salon des arts m?nagers: learning to consume in postwar France; Epilogue. This impressive study fills an important gap in the history of postWorld War II economic and social recovery by expertly analyzing the contribution of womens consumption and consumer advocacy to the trentes glorieuses of French economic growth between 1945 and 1975. In this fascinating story, Pulju connects data ol³©