Program Type
Undergraduate
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Kelly Jones
Document Type
Poster
Location
Face-to-face
Start Date
18-4-2024 10:00 AM
Abstract
On July 1st, 1917, in the midst of The Great War, Arkansas’s Governor Charles Brough appointed Ida Frauenthal as chairwoman to the state’s new Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense for Arkansas. The report created by the Woman's Committee allowed the committee to first: organize the results of the efforts of many civil groups and second: immortalize the women’s wartime efforts. Women’s war efforts in this era naturally focused on the home front. The need to conserve food, a national and local concern, occupied much of women’s wartime efforts. Fear mongering and propaganda used to push the food conservation efforts targeted the American housewife. As the acknowledged moral and economic authorities of the home, women were seen as in charge of the domestic thriftiness and became the foot soldiers for food conservation. This presentation draws from scholarship on the relationship between women, food conservation, and propaganda. I am pairing it with many newspaper articles from across Arkansas and the Woman’s Committee report. These primary sources show that manipulative language pushed the “need” for food conservation, which women took seriously. Their efforts were partly a response to the national call for action and partly from self motivation to take on this wartime effort.
Recommended Citation
Stolp, Emily A., "Women and Food in World War I Era Arkansas" (2024). ATU Research Symposium. 57.
https://orc.library.atu.edu/atu_rs/2024/2024/57
Included in
Women and Food in World War I Era Arkansas
Face-to-face
On July 1st, 1917, in the midst of The Great War, Arkansas’s Governor Charles Brough appointed Ida Frauenthal as chairwoman to the state’s new Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense for Arkansas. The report created by the Woman's Committee allowed the committee to first: organize the results of the efforts of many civil groups and second: immortalize the women’s wartime efforts. Women’s war efforts in this era naturally focused on the home front. The need to conserve food, a national and local concern, occupied much of women’s wartime efforts. Fear mongering and propaganda used to push the food conservation efforts targeted the American housewife. As the acknowledged moral and economic authorities of the home, women were seen as in charge of the domestic thriftiness and became the foot soldiers for food conservation. This presentation draws from scholarship on the relationship between women, food conservation, and propaganda. I am pairing it with many newspaper articles from across Arkansas and the Woman’s Committee report. These primary sources show that manipulative language pushed the “need” for food conservation, which women took seriously. Their efforts were partly a response to the national call for action and partly from self motivation to take on this wartime effort.