The woman's paradise: Gender and consumer culture in France, 1944--1965

"The Woman's Paradise: Gender and Consumer Culture in France, 1944--1965" demonstrates how through their demands from and about the domestic sphere, French women actively shaped culture and society in the postwar years as France emerged as a modern nation of mass consumers. In 1949, sixty-three percent of French homes did not have running water, and the most popular electrical appliance in the country was the clothes iron. Twenty years later, three-quarters of French households had a refrigerator, and half had a washing machine. In less than a decade, the stock of home appliances in France grew by four hundred percent, establishing the household as an important site for the reception of consumer culture, and making women, who were most often responsible for the decision to buy appliances, a powerful force for modernization. Despite the consistent glorification of consumer culture in the women's press, the demands for American-style consumer durables on the part of women's and family organizations, and the heavy involvement of women in consumer organization in the 1950s and 1960s, historians have not explored the significance of women's actions and demands in the transition to consumer society in France.; Most historical work on women in postwar France has focused on the failure of women to become involved in high politics despite enfranchisement at the end of the Second World War. Expanding our definition of "the political" creates a more complete history of women, politics, and society in France following the war by allowing consideration of politically expedient and publicly effective actions taken outside the traditional structures of republican citizenship. Women's, family, and consumer organizations created a space for women's political influence through the role of "consumer for the nation." Women took to the streets demanding food and shelter in the aftermath of war, they monitored prices during rationing and periods of high inflation, and they eventually worked to create a society in which all families enjoyed access to consumer goods. The demands that women made in the course of caring for their homes and families shaped the transition to a modern consumer society in France between 1944 and 1965.