Author:
Plutshack Victoria,Merck Ashton
Abstract
Abstract
From 1939 to 1941, the US Rural Electrification Administration conducted a nationwide educational campaign to share the benefits of electricity with rural Americans, known as the Electric Farm Equipment Show. A key part of the show was a series of appliance schools, which were run by female home economists and designed for a female audience. This article examines an appliance school organized for one REA women's club and the efforts of officials like REA chief home electrification specialist Clara O. Nale to navigate the disconnect between the official REA project, which assumed a gendered division of labor, and the real needs of the farm women they served. Through the Comanche County REA Women's Club, the article explores how REA administrators imagined that women would participate in its cooperative-led electrification efforts, women's engagement with and resistance to the REA's programming, and how technology adoption was ultimately mediated through women's priorities.
Reference57 articles.
1. The Rise and Decline of the Kerosene Kitchen: A Neglected Energy Transition in Rural America, 1870–1950;Aldrich;Agricultural History,2020
2. Bureau of the Census. Number of Inhabitants: Total Population for States, Counties, and Minor Civil Divisions; for Urban and Rural Areas; for Incorporated Places; for Metropolitan Districts; and for Census Tracts. Vol. 1 of 1940 Census of Population. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1942. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1942/dec/population-vol-1.html.
3. Rehabilitating the Region: The New Deal, Gender, and the Remaking of the Rural South;Coleman;Southeastern Geographer,2010
4. The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century;Cowan;Technology and Culture,1976