Mimi Pinson Goes to War: Taste,Class and Gender in France, 1900–18

In the years leading up to the First World War, the Frenchwomen of a free performing‐arts programme for female workers, known as the Mimi Pinsons, began to appear frequently in popular stories, articles, poems and songs as cultural shorthand for a renovated social vision of France. Founded by composer and philanthropist Gustave Charpentier in 1900, the Oeuvre de Mimi Pinson taught its worker–students elementary music, song and dance, and gradually expanded to include a charitable organisation and social network. A closer examination of the OMP reveals that its members were also used to reconcile early twentieth‐century French anxieties about working‐class militancy and even war by way of a potent cultural association of female sexuality, aesthetic refinement and labour. In the years before the First World War, the Mimi Pinsons were defined by journalists, government officials and the OMP's own organisers according to a formulaic type which at once modernised and constrained the role of the female Parisian worker. Associated almost exclusively with the luxury‐garment trades – seamstresses, flowermakers, milliners and department‐store clerks – the new Mimi Pinsons were embraced by the public as naturally chic yet diligent guardians of French art and craft. These female worker–students allowed an easy merging of the body of the female worker with particularly French notions of the patriotic responsibility of feminine taste. When the First World War came, many of the Mimi Pinsons joined the war effort as workers and nurses, yet they were embraced by the public primarily for their service as tasteful creators of patriotic decorative objects, and as an ideal symbolic figure for managing anxieties about the social dissolution that came with the war.     

The Difficulties of Gender in France: Reflections on a Concept

This article examines the cultural and institutional resistance to the use of gender as a category in French historiography. In France, history, and, more specifically, women's history, has not really assimilated the openings offered by the problematics of the construction of differences, nor the logical consequences of the use of gender. Cultural differences are partly responsible for this, and the polysemic nature of the word genre may add to the confusion. With a few exceptions, women's history in France is reluctant to engage in a historical analysis which would take into account the founding role of hierarchy and of relations of power and difference which are central to gender.     

Queens Consort,Gender and Diplomacy: Catherine of Aragon,Claude of France and the Field of Cloth of Gold

In 1520, two queens consort, Catherine of Aragon and Claude of France, attended the event now known as the Field of Cloth of Gold. This article analyses representations of their involvement across three sources; contemporary diplomatic correspondence and two later sources, Edward Hall's Chronicle (1548 and 1550) and the Hampton Court Palace painting of the Field (c. 1545). It examines how the producers of these sources shaped the function of the consort according to their own motivations, genre and the context of their own time. It argues that each source acknowledges the consorts as important to the event's success, but that while contemporary letters represent Catherine and Claude as individuals, the later sources exhibit shifting narratives to focus on the trope of ideal queenship. A similar shift was not apparent for kingship. This comparison of contemporary and later depictions of the consorts reveals a gendered reshaping of their role at the Field across time according to the needs of the creators which, in turn, sheds light on understandings of queenship and diplomatic engagement in early modern England.     

Gender,Environment and Population

Based on field research from three regions with distinct variations in environment, population density, livelihood bases and levels of resource dependency, this study investigates the gender aspects of environmental change. It seeks to illustrate the relevance of gender factors for the patterns of adaptation to change, for the welfare impact of changes on the population, and for the ramifications for resource management and livelihood generation at the community level. It employs a gender analysis to examine the impact of such changes on population variables, particularly on health and nutrition, and to explore the more general question of whether women's socio-economic status is being threatened by the pressures of environmental change.     

The Queen and her ‘Minister of Fashion’: Gender,Credit and Politics in Pre–Revolutionary France

This article examines the economic, cultural, and political role of credit in Old Regime France through the career of the fashion merchant Rose Bertin. It addresses three aspects of Bertin’s credit practices: her involvement in networks of trade credit, her use of reputation as a form of credit, and the way critics used her credit relations with Marie–Antoinette to discredit the political economy of the Old Regime. Using Bertin as a case study, the article reveals women’s involvement in multiple facets of credit and underlines the practical and conceptual links between credit and other gendered forms of circulation, such as fashion and sex.     

Race,Gender, and Communications in Natural Disasters

We examine public attitudes toward vulnerability and evacuation in hurricane natural disasters. Using the results of an opinion survey in a coastal, New England state, we find important differences in how men and women, and Whites and minorities perceive natural disasters. Race, gender, and geographic proximity to the coast affect how vulnerable people believe their residence is to a major hurricane, while government officials and media reporting telling people to evacuate influence evacuation decisions. In order to avoid future breakdowns, governments need to understand the different information processing approaches of various groups of people.