| Description |
xii, 267 pages ; 24cm |
| Contents |
1. Introduction -- 2. Lady Reading and Women's Voluntary Services -- 3. Colonizing the Urban Public Sphere -- 4. Integrating the Working Class -- 5. Discipline and Charm -- 6. Coalfield -- 7. Rural England -- 8. Uncertain Future -- 9. Our Towns -- 10. Home Helps -- 11. Women's Voluntary Services and the Voluntary Sector -- 12. Conclusion |
| Summary |
"The associational life of middle-class women in twentieth-century England has been largely ignored by historians. During the Second World War women's clubs, guilds, and institutes provided a basis for the mobilization of up to a million women, mainly housewives, into unpaid part-time work. Women's Voluntary Services, which was set up by the Government in 1938 to organize this work, generated a rich archive of reports and correspondence which provide the social historian with a unique window into the female public sphere." |
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"Questioning the view that the Second World War served to democratize English society, James Hinton shows how the war enabled middle-class social leaders to reinforce their claims to authority. Displaying 'character' through their voluntary work, the leisured women at the centre of this study made themselves indispensable to the war effort. The author delineates these 'continuities of class', reconstructing intimate portraits of local female social leadership in contrasting settings across provincial England (towns large and small, shire counties, the Durham coalfield), tracing complex and often acerbic rivalries within the voluntary sector, and uncovering gulfs of mutual distrust and incomprehension dividing publicly active women along gendered frontiers of class and party."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Bibliography: p.241-262. - Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Bibliography: pages 241-262. - Includes index |
| Subject |
Women's Voluntary Service -- History
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Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defence (Great Britain)
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Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defence (Great Britain) -- History.
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Class consciousness -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Middle-aged women -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Middle class women -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Voluntarism -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Social classes -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Volunteers -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Women volunteers in social service -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Women -- Great Britain -- Social conditions.
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Social aspects -- Great Britain.
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World War, 1939-1945 -- War work -- Great Britain.
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Civilian relief -- Great Britain.
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Women -- Great Britain.
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| SUBJECT |
Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85056944
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| Author |
Oxford Scholarship Online.
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| LC no. |
2002192550 |
| ISBN |
0199243298 (acid-free paper) |
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