Rebecca J. Pulju . Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France . New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011. Pp. xiv, 260. $85.00.

Abstract

Bringing a fresh perspective to the history of gender and consumer culture, Rebecca J. Pulju explores in this volume the development of an economy and culture of modern mass consumerism in France from 1944 to 1968. Pulju argues that in the immediate post–World War II decades the French state, women's organizations, consumer groups, and Frenchwomen themselves participated in the construction of a female “citizen consumer” who not only managed her household economy effectively but also contributed to national economic prosperity. This notion of a citizen consumer emerged at a historical moment in which France experienced liberation at multiple levels: for the nation as a whole, liberation from Nazi occupation; for women, the additional liberation of suffrage rights. In this environment, Pulju contends, the idea of a citizen consumer offered women a form of citizenship that was consonant with traditional gender precepts, as it kept definitions of femininity—and female citizenship—centered on home and family. Liberation for women could be manifested in their power as consumers with access to modern consumer goods for the household (among them, washing machines, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners) that would allegedly empower them by transforming the home into a place of familial comfort, and wherein the previously labor‐intensive nature of household management would be alleviated by rational methods and tools. The maintenance of traditional prejudices toward women was evident in the belief shared by planners and consumer organizations that women would have to be educated and disciplined regarding appropriate modes of fulfilling their roles in the creation of this rational, modern mass consumer economy (such as conscientiousness about monitoring the prices of goods for purchase). The implication was that women, if left to their own devices, would consume indiscriminately, unwisely, and irrationally to the detriment of the national economy, not to mention their own household finances.