What Do Women Want? Housewives’ Associations, Activism and Changing Representations of Women in the 1950s

ABSTRACT

The myth that the women's movement in Britain went into decline in the decade following the Second World War has now been debunked. Yet despite this more accurate re-telling of the fate of female activism in the 1950s, the view that the majority of women at this time aspired only to marriage and motherhood persists. The iconic image of the ‘ideal 1950s housewife’ has proved hard to excise from the historical record and the public imagination. The aim of this paper is to discover what women really wanted in the 1950s. This will be done through a study of popular housewives' associations who represented the interests of over a million British women throughout the decade. The paper will evaluate how successful these groups were in supporting their members and campaigning to improve the lives of women. In exploring these themes it is argued that a new understanding of domesticity emerged in the 1950s better reflecting what women really wanted in the decades following the Second World War.

Notes on contributor

Dr Caitríona Beaumont is Associate Professor in Social History and Director of Research for the School of Law and Social Sciences, London South Bank University. She has published numerous articles and chapters on the history of women, women's organisations, women's movements and voluntary action in Ireland and Britain during the twentieth century. Her most recent book is Housewives and Citizens: domesticity and the women's movement in England 1928–1964 (Manchester University Press, 2013). She is currently working on the history of women's organisations and female activism in the UK, 1960 to 1980.

Notes

1 Home and Country, 31, 7, July 1949. WI Archive, Women's Library @ London School of Economics (LSE), 5FWI/A/2/3/08 Box 47.

2 For a discussion of the role played by women and women's organisations during wartime and in post-war reconstruction see for example: Caitríona Beaumont (2013) Housewives and Citizens: domesticity and the women's movement in England, 1928–64 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Penny Summerfield (1984) Women Workers in the Second World War: production and patriarchy in conflict (London: Routledge); Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2000) Austerity in Britain: rationing, controls and consumption, 1939–1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

3 HM Government (1942) Social Insurance and Allied Services (The Beveridge Report) Cmd. 6404 (London: HMSO), p. 53. For a discussion on the representation of housewives in the Beveridge Report see Stephanie Spencer (2005) Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 22–48; Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 115–129.

4 For example in the period 1945–59, twenty-nine women were elected for Labour, fifteen for the Conservatives and one for the Liberals: see Martin Pugh (2000) Women and the Women's Movement in Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan), p. 303. In 1954 the total for women in local government was 4142 in comparison to 42,208 men: Public Questions Newsheet 1955. WI Archive, 5FWI/D/1/2/04: Box 138.

5 See for example Caitríona Beaumont (2015) ‘What is a Wife’? Reconstructing domesticity in post-war Britain before The Feminine Mystique, History of Women in the Americas, 3, pp. 61–76, http://journals.sas.ac.uk/hwa/article/view/2186/2125 (accessed 25 September 2015); Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 189–194; Majorie Ferguson (1983) Forever Feminine: women's magazines and the cult of femininity (London: Heinemann), pp. 44–77.

6 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain, p. 103.

7 Pugh, Women and the Women's Movement, p. 284.

8 See for example Claire Langhamer (2013) The English in Love: the intimate story of an emotional revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Rachel Ritchie (2010) The Housewife and the Modern: the home and appearance in women's magazines, 1954–1969 (PhD Thesis, University of Manchester); Angela Davis (2012) Modern Motherhood: women and the family in England, c. 1945–2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Virginia Nicholson (2015) Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: the story of women in the 1950s (London: Viking); Spencer, Gender, Work and Education.

9 Rachel Ritchie writes that Woman was the most iconic of the middle class weeklies to achieve a mass circulation, selling two million copies per issue by the 1950s: Ritchie, ‘The Housewife and the Modern’, p. 37. Good Housekeeping was read by one of every two middle class women in 1950: Dolly Smith Wilson (2006) A New Look at the Affluent Worker: the good working mother in post-war Britain, Twentieth Century British History, 17(2), pp. 206–229.

10 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, p. 190.

11 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens.

12 Pugh, Women and the Women's Movement, pp. 69, 297.

13 For example Barbara Caine (1999) English Feminism 1780–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Sue Bruley (1999) Women in Britain Since 1900 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press).

14 Pearl Jephcott (1962) Married Women Working (London: George Allen & Unwin), pp. 1, 20. See also Smith Wilson, ‘A New Look’.

15 For example Ferdynand Zweig (1952) Women's Life and Labour (London: Victor Gollancz); Alva Myrdal & Viola Klein (1956) Women's Two Roles: home and work (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul); Jephcott, Married Women Working.

16 Between the years 1951 to 1955, 76.4 women (per thousand of population) married. This rose to 82.6 between the years 1956 to 1960: see Pugh, Women and the Women's Movement, p. 223.

17 Stephanie Spencer (2004) Reflections on the ‘Site of Struggle’: girls' experience of secondary education in the late 1950s, in History of Education, 33(4), pp. 437–449.

18 For more on the woman question in the 1950s and 1960s see Caine, English Feminism, pp. 240–254; Birmingham Feminist Women's Group, Feminism as Femininity in the Nineteen-Fifties? Feminist Review, 3, 1979, pp. 48–65.

19 Caine, English Feminism, p. 242.

20 Smith Wilson, ‘A New Look’, pp. 210–211.

21 For example Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963) argued that women had fallen victim to domesticity and as a result were left frustrated, unhappy and unfulfilled. The tension between women's domestic role and paid work was evident in other western industrialised nations during the 1950s for example in the US and Australia. See Beaumont, ‘What is a Wife’, pp. 63–64.

22 See Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 40–67.

23 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2001) Housewifery, in Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Ed.) Women in Twentieth Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Education), p. 156.

24 Olwen Campbell (1952) Report of a Conference on The Feminine Point of View (London: Williams & Norgate).

25 Ibid. p. 47. See also Caine, English Feminism, p. 237.

26 Catherine Blackford (1996) Ideas, Structures and Practices of Feminism, 1939–1969 (PhD thesis, University of East London), p. 115.

27 For example during the 1940s and 1950s the MWA had approximately 2000 members in twenty branches: Blackford, ‘Ideas, Structures and Practices', p. 102. The WFL was disbanded in 1961 due to a failure to recruit new members: Caine, English Feminism, p. 239.

28 Pugh, Women and the Women's Movement, p. 284. See also Mark Donnelly (2005) Sixties Britain (London: Pearson Longman), p. 161.

29 See Joyce Freeguard (2004) It's Time for Women of the 1950s To Stand Up and Be Counted (PhD thesis, University of Sussex); Linda Perriton (2007) Forgotten Feminists: the Federation of British Professional and Business Women, 1933–1969, Women's History Review, 16, 1, pp. 79–97; Samantha Clements (2008) Feminism, Citizenship and Social Activity: the role and importance of local women's organisations, Nottingham 1918–1969 (PhD thesis, University of Nottingham); Blackford, ‘Ideas, Structures and Practices’.

30 In 1946 there were 41,704 petitions for divorce. This figure rose to 137,400 during the period 1956–1960: Claire Langhamer (2006) Adultery in Post-War England, History Workshop Journal, 62, pp. 94.

31 Blackford, ‘Ideas, Structures and Practices’, p. 220. See also Freeguard, ‘It's Time For Women’, pp. 151–156.

32 Freeguard, ‘It's Time for Women’, pp. 96–122.

33 Gillian Scott (1998) Feminism and the Politics of Working Women: the Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War (London: UCL Press), p. xii.

34 Ibid. pp. 272–273.

35 Ritchie, ‘The Housewife and the Modern’, pp. 65–90.

36 Amy Black & Stephen Brooke (1997) The Labour Party, Women, and the Problem of Gender, 1951–1966, Journal of British Studies, 36, pp. 419–452.

37 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (1996) Explaining the Gender Gap: the Conservative Party and the women's vote, 1945–1964, in Martin Francis & Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Eds) The Conservatives and British Society 1880–1990 (Cardiff: University of Wales), pp. 196–215.

38 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, p. 201–202.

39 Ibid. p. 190.

40 Handbook of the National Council of Women of Great Britain 1931–1932 (1932), p. 61.

41 Lesley Johnson & Justine Lloyd (2004) Sentenced to Everyday Life: feminism and the housewife (New York: Berg), p. 11.

42 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 40–67.

43 See Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 9–15. See also Cordelia Moyse (2009) A History of the Mothers’ Union: women, Anglicanism and globalisation (London: The Boydell Press).

44 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 23–27. See also Maggie Andrews (1997) The Acceptable Face of Feminism: the Women's Institute as a social movement (London: Lawrence & Wishart).

45 Rosalind Chambers (1966) A Study of Three Voluntary Organisations, in D. V. Glass (Ed.) Social Mobility in Britain (3rd edn, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), p. 395.

46 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 27–33. Angela Davis writes that in the 1950s middle class women were more likely to join associations to find companionship, a trend noted by social commentators at the time: Davis, Modern Motherhood, p. 46.

47 Wendy Webster (1998) Imagining Home: gender, ‘race’ and national identity, 1945–1964 (London: Routledge), pp. 149–182.

48 File on Affiliated Organisations, WI Archive, 5FWI/A/3/81: Box 66.

49 See Caitríona Beaumont (2009) Housewives, Workers and Citizens: voluntary women's organisations and the campaign for women's rights in England and Wales during the post-war Period, in Nick Crowson, Matthew Hilton & James McKay (Eds) NGOs in Contemporary Britain: non-state actors in society and politics since 1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 59–76.

50 See Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism, pp. 59–78.

51 WI (1959) Time to be Social (London: Novello & Co), p. 1.

52 Ibid. p. 28.

53 Andrews, The Acceptable Face of Feminism, pp. 59–78.

54 The Mothers’ Union Workers Paper (July 1950), p. 68.

55 National Union of Townswomen's Guilds, Handbook 1938 (1938), p. 17.

56 For further discussion on the financial position of married, widowed and divorced women and on maternity services see Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 108–115, 200–210.

57 Claire Langhamer (2005) The Meanings of Home in Post-war Britain, Journal of Contemporary History, 40(2), pp. 341–362.

58 See Caitríona Beaumont (2013) Where to Park the Pram? Voluntary women's organisations, citizenship and the campaign for better housing in England, 1928–1945, Women's History Review, 22(1), pp. 75–96.

59 For a full account of these housing surveys see Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 171–175.

60 Design of Dwellings: report of the Central Housing Advisory Committee (1944) (London: HMSO).

61 Deborah Ryan (1997) The Ideal Home in the Twentieth Century (London: Hazar), p. 89.

62 Langhamer, ‘The Meanings of Home’, p. 343.

63 Ritchie, ‘The Housewife and the Modern’, p. 68.

64 WI Public Questions Newsletter, 7 (January 1952), WI Archive, 5FWI/D/1/2/01: Box 138.

65 Ibid.

66 The two other houses were being fitted out by the TG and the Old People's Welfare Committee.

67 WI Public Questions Newsletter, 8 (March 1952), WI Archive, 5FWI/D/1/2/01: Box 138.

68 WI Public Questions Newsletter, 9 (May 1952), WI Archive, 5FWI/D/1/2/01: Box 138.

69 WI Executive Committee Minutes, September 1953–June 1955, WI Archive, 5FWI/A/1/1/24: Box 22.

70 Simon Goodenough (1977) Jam and Jerusalem (Glasgow: Collins), p. 82.

71 Ritchie, ‘The Housewife and the Modern’, p. 80.

72 WI Public Questions Sub-Committee 26 November 1953, WI Executive Committee Minutes, September 1953–June 1955, WI Archive, 5FWI/A/1/1/24: Box 22.

73 WI Annual General Meeting Reports 28 May 1957, WI Archive, 5FWI/A/2/3/09: Box 47. By the late 1950s 95% of households were wired for electricity. Cited in Ritchie, ‘The Housewife and the Modern’, p. 80.

74 NCW Evidence to the Central Housing Advisory Committee Sub-Committee on Housing Standards 22 December 1959, National Archives, Public Records Office, HLG 37/166.

75 Matthew Hilton (2003) Consumerism in the Twentieth Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

76 Ibid. p. 168.

77 Mark Abrams (1959) The Teenage Consumer (London: The London Press Exchange), p. 21.

78 ‘Housewives Demand a New Deal For Shoppers “Consumer Protection” Conference’, The Guardian 23 February 1956.

79 Ibid.

80 Ritchie, ‘The Housewife and the Modern’, p. 85.

81 WI Public Questions Sub-Committee 8 September 1954, WI Archive, 5FWI/A/1/1/24: Box 22.

82 WI Annual General Meeting Reports 28 May 1957, WI Archive, 5FWI/A/2/3/09: Box 47.

83 The Townswoman, January 1958, p. 10.

84 Mothers’ Union News (Watch News) June 1963, p. 24.

85 See Beaumont, ‘What is a Wife?; Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 195–199.

86 Women in Council, 28, 8 (April 1957), p. 69.

87 See Smith Wilson, ‘A New Look’, pp. 206–229.

88 Ibid.

89 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), NCW Archive, ACC/3613/3/024, Executive Committee Minutes, 21 November 1958.

90 Home and Country, 39, 9 (September 1957), p. 269.

91 The Townswoman, September 1963, p. 243.

92 See Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 146–153.

93 NCW Archive, ACC/3613/1/020, Executive Committee Minutes, 18 September 1953. The Beveridge Report had recommended that married women workers be treated as a separate category of worker and this view was embedded in the 1946 National Insurance Act.

94 NCW Archive, ACC/3613/3/024, Executive Committee Minutes, 18 July 1958.

95 NCW Archive, ACC/3613/01/023, Executive Committee Minutes, 12 April 1957.

96 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, p. 198. The number of women finding employment in skilled work fell from 15.5% in 1951 to 13.9% in 1961: Gerry Holloway (2005) Women and Work in Britain Since 1840 (London: Routledge), p. 204.

97 Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens, pp. 215–217.