Great Depression Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==== Role of women and household economics ==== Women's primary role was as housewives; without a steady flow of family income, their work became much harder in dealing with food and clothing and medical care. Birthrates fell everywhere, as children were postponed until families could financially support them. The average birthrate for 14 major countries fell 12% from 19.3 births per thousand population in 1930, to 17.0 in 1935.<ref>W. S. Woytinsky and E. S. Woytinsky, ''World population and production: trends and outlook'' (1953) p. 148</ref> In Canada, half of Roman Catholic women defied Church teachings and used contraception to postpone births.<ref>Denyse Baillargeon, ''Making Do: Women, Family and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression'' (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999), p. 159.</ref> Among the few women in the labor force, layoffs were less common in the white-collar jobs and they were typically found in light manufacturing work. However, there was a widespread demand to limit families to one paid job, so that wives might lose employment if their husband was employed.<ref>{{cite book |last=Stephenson |first=Jill |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-rqOAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3 |title=Women in Nazi Germany |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-317-87607-6 |pages=3–5 |access-date=June 27, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210816172022/https://books.google.com/books?id=-rqOAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3 |archive-date=August 16, 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Susan K. Foley |url=https://archive.org/details/womeninfrancesin00fole |title=Women in France Since 1789: The Meanings of Difference |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-230-80214-8 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/womeninfrancesin00fole/page/186 186]–90 |author-link1=Susan Foley |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Srigley |first=Katrina |url=https://archive.org/details/breadwinningdaug00srig |title=Breadwinning Daughters: Young Working Women in a Depression-era City, 1929–1939 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-4426-1003-3 |page=[https://archive.org/details/breadwinningdaug00srig/page/135 135] |url-access=registration}}</ref> Across Britain, there was a tendency for married women to join the labor force, competing for part-time jobs especially.<ref>Jessica S. Bean, {{"'}}To help keep the home going': female labour supply in interwar London". ''Economic History Review'' (2015) 68#2 pp. 441–470.</ref><ref>Deirdre Beddoe, ''Back to Home and Duty: Women Between the Wars, 1918–1939'' (1989).</ref> In France, very slow population growth, especially in comparison to Germany continued to be a serious issue in the 1930s. Support for increasing welfare programs during the depression included a focus on women in the family. The Conseil Supérieur de la Natalité campaigned for provisions enacted in the Code de la Famille (1939) that increased state assistance to families with children and required employers to protect the jobs of fathers, even if they were immigrants.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Camiscioli |first1=Elisa |author-link=Elisa Camiscioli |year=2001 |title=Producing Citizens, Reproducing the 'French Race': Immigration, Demography, and Pronatalism in Early Twentieth-Century France |journal=Gender & History |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=593–621 |doi=10.1111/1468-0424.00245 |pmid=18198513 |s2cid=20333294}}</ref> In rural and small-town areas, women expanded their operation of vegetable gardens to include as much food production as possible. In the United States, agricultural organizations sponsored programs to teach housewives how to optimize their gardens and to raise poultry for meat and eggs.<ref>Ann E. McCleary, {{"'}}I Was Really Proud of Them': Canned Raspberries and Home Production During the Farm Depression". ''Augusta Historical Bulletin'' (2010), Issue 46, pp. 14–44.</ref> Rural women made [[feed sack dress]]es and other items for themselves and their families and homes from feed sacks.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Vogelsang |first=Willem |title=3. Feedsacks and the Great Depression |url=https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-digital-exhibition/index.php/for-a-few-sacks-more/item/119-3-feedsacks-and-the-great-depression |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415092351/https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-digital-exhibition/index.php/for-a-few-sacks-more/item/119-3-feedsacks-and-the-great-depression |archive-date=April 15, 2021 |access-date=March 21, 2020 |website=trc-leiden.nl |language=en-gb}}</ref> In American cities, African American women quiltmakers enlarged their activities, promoted collaboration, and trained neophytes. Quilts were created for practical use from various inexpensive materials and increased social interaction for women and promoted camaraderie and personal fulfillment.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Klassen |first1=Tari |year=2008 |title=How Depression-Era Quiltmakers Constructed Domestic Space: An Interracial Processual Study |journal=Midwestern Folklore |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=17–47}}</ref> Oral history provides evidence for how housewives in a modern industrial city handled shortages of money and resources. Often they updated strategies their mothers used when they were growing up in poor families. Cheap foods were used, such as soups, beans and noodles. They purchased the cheapest cuts of meat—sometimes even horse meat—and recycled the [[Sunday roast]] into sandwiches and soups. They sewed and patched clothing, traded with their neighbors for outgrown items, and made do with colder homes. New furniture and appliances were postponed until better days. Many women also worked outside the home, or took boarders, did laundry for trade or cash, and did sewing for neighbors in exchange for something they could offer. Extended families used mutual aid—extra food, spare rooms, repair-work, cash loans—to help cousins and in-laws.<ref>Baillargeon, ''Making Do: Women, Family and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression'' (1999), pp. 70, 108, 136–138, 159.</ref> In Japan, official government policy was deflationary and the opposite of Keynesian spending. Consequently, the government launched a campaign across the country to induce households to reduce their consumption, focusing attention on spending by housewives.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Metzler |first1=Mark |year=2004 |title=Woman's Place in Japan's Great Depression: Reflections on the Moral Economy of Deflation |journal=Journal of Japanese Studies |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=315–352 |doi=10.1353/jjs.2004.0045 |s2cid=146273711}}</ref> In Germany, the government tried to reshape private household consumption under the Four-Year Plan of 1936 to achieve German economic self-sufficiency. The Nazi women's organizations, other propaganda agencies and the authorities all attempted to shape such consumption as economic self-sufficiency was needed to prepare for and to sustain the coming war. The organizations, propaganda agencies and authorities employed slogans that called up traditional values of thrift and healthy living. However, these efforts were only partly successful in changing the behavior of housewives.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Reagin |first1=N. R. |year=2001 |title=Marktordnung and Autarkic Housekeeping: Housewives and Private Consumption under the Four-Year Plan, 1936–1939 |journal=German History |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=162–184 |doi=10.1191/026635501678771619 |pmid=19610237}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page