Week 13: Affluence, Consumption and Gender
Introduction
In modern society, consumption is fundamental to the ways in which we
construct or indeed undermine identities, whether those identities are of status,
class, gender or nationality. To consume, therefore, is not to absorb passively,
but to contribute to the process of creating identities, stereotypes, meanings. As
such, goods have the power not only to shape people as individuals, but to draw
them together as groups through linkages of fashion, style & taste.
Consumption as a political issue
- The post-war continuation of rationing, necessary as it was, became associated
with a distinctive socialist ideology of central control & social levelling
- At the same time, post-war demand for consumer goods was high, & victory
reinforced general expectations of improved living standards
- The years of post-war austerity have thus been closely associated with the
erosion of support for the Lab government
- By contrast, the Conservative party fashioned itself as the champion of the
consumer. Tory politicians recognized the burden of austerity & promised
decontrol & increased supplies of consumer gds
1950s employment & wages
- By 1954 all rationing controls had been dismantled, & Britain had begun a
period of extraordinary & sustained economic growth
- Average wages rose from £8 per week in 1951 to £15 in 1961
- This was driven, in particular, by a rapid expansion of light manufacturing
industries; middle-class salaries also rose steeply
1950s consumption
- Unsurprisingly, for most the 1950s & 60s were therefore decades of rising
living stands & consumption, & a period in which consumer spending shifted
increasingly from necessities to luxuries: leisure, clothing, holidays etc
- Standards of housing improved dramatically, & domestic appliances multiplied
- 4.3% of families owned a TV in 1950 – 82% in 1960; 1.5million private
telephones in 1951 – 4.2million in 1966; 1.5million cars privately owned in 1945
– 5.5 million in 1960
- All social groups shared in growth in incomes & the period was marked by
rising living standards & altered lifestyles for working-class families
- However, this rise in consumption was led by the middle class, and growing
affluence therefore existed side by side with persistent inequality
Home
- Home was one of the most important symbols in post-war Britain, & the trend
towards more home-based leisure activities & consumption patterns deepened
- The dislocations of the war had fostered an intense romance with home life:
home became a symbol of normality, harmony & privacy; & for millions of
working-class people it also became the goal of reconstruction.
- Working-class men, in particular, became less concerned with activities outside
home, or with values beyond the family.
Men, home and family
- Altered attitudes towards the home reflected altered attitudes to work
- In the boom years of the 1950s & 1960s, workers’ attitudes to their employers
shifted: industry was crying out for workers, eroding deference to employers
- Greater job security gave men a more instrumental relationship with work
- Work provided financial resources for use elsewhere (not least in the home), &
the male sociability and solidarity of the workplace became less important
- Nonetheless, running the home continued to be a largely female responsibility
Female lifestyles
- Many pre-war patterns can be seen in women’s post-war lives, & inequalities
remained in work and marriage. But perhaps most women felt that the range of
choices open to them was greater than that enjoyed by their mothers
Women, home & family
- The post-war aspirations of a majority of women focused on marriage &
domestic life. At the same time, women’s domestic responsibilities as work
continued to be ignored or underplayed within national culture
- Rather than being pushed out of the labour market in the immediate post-war
years, women tended to leave voluntarily to start families delayed by war
- Social & governmental pressures on women to fulfil the roles of home-centred
wife & mother were also considerable
Women & consumption
- Rising wages and increased availability of goods did open new cultural
possibilities, & women used clothing, cosmetics, magazines & novels to engage
with new cultural identities that could be glamorous, defiant and independent
- Nonetheless, although consumption was both a male & female activity, it was
often portrayed as inherently trivial and feminine, representing women’s
supposed inability to engage with weightier affairs
Women, war & employment
- Women often shared the view that they were temporary workers in WW2,
& many were keen to return to a less disruptive ‘normality’
- While women in monotonous, unskilled work were often pleased to return to
the home, women in skilled work often wanted to stay in full-time employment
- We must also acknowledge that overall numbers of women in work increased
year on year after 1945, reaching 8.4 million in 1961, far above wartime levels
- The numbers of part-time female workers grew very dramatically: 779,000 in
1951 to 3.8 million in 1981. The resulting increase of 2 income families
underpinned much of the post-war consumer boom
- But work-related inequalities remained pronounced. Issues of equal pay &
opportunities were only addressed very slowly
- Ministry of Labour figures from 1945 revealed that the average earnings of
women in industry were 53% those of men, and promotion was often
particularly unequal
- In 1961, only 3.5% of the legal profession was female