The Living Present

The author documents French women mobilizing on the home front during wartime, portraying their practical labor in markets, workshops, munitions factories, canteens and relief organizations, and their efforts to maintain agriculture, shops and domestic life under bombardment. Personal sketches and brief profiles illustrate varying social classes and motivations, from volunteer charity work to industrial employment. A second section moves from wartime reportage to reflections on feminism, demographic and social anxieties, and proposals for institutional and cultural reforms to expand women’s opportunities in the postwar era.