Gender and Consumerism in Postwar Canada

During the Second World War, both married and unmarried women worked in wartime industries and factories to take the place of men who joined the service. Although women didn’t play a significant role on the battlefields in Europe compared to males, it would be logical to conclude that women played an integral role in the participation and victory in WWII both at home and abroad. Yet when one considers their contribution, it is hard to imagine how much more they could have done given the conservative views of gender role at that time. In the context of traditional gender roles and boundaries, women conceivably maximized their wartime efforts by working in a variety of jobs including industry, volunteering, and serving as support staff for servicemen in Europe. What is striking however is how gender roles and consumerism contributed to the marginalization of women during the postwar era given their input and sacrifice that led to the economic boom. The difference between the commercially portrayed media ideals and the actual reality of family life were considerable, and throughout the 1950s families strived to acquire and consume to close the gap between commercial expectation and the reality of family life in order to live the “good life.” This paper will attempt to show the negative effects of consumerism on women and the positive effects for men, and the reasons behind the paradox. Furthermore, mothers and wives were isolated, discriminated against, and reduced to an idealist and traditional view of who they were supposed to be and how they were supposed to act in the postwar period. When the Axis forces surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Canada was under the Liberal leadership of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Our contemporary understanding of the term “liberal” should not be confused with Mackenzie King’s and his successor Louis St. Laurent’s government at that time. Canadians by and large held conservative, traditional beliefs and values,

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