front cover of Riveting and Rationing in Dixie
Riveting and Rationing in Dixie
Alabama Women and the Second World War
Mary Martha Thomas
University of Alabama Press, 1987
The first book to examine the impact of World War II on the roles of women in an individual state
 
Covers the experience of both black and white Alabama women as defense workers, volunteers, and homemakers. The most important change for women during the war years was their employment in jobs normally held by men, which posed an implicit challenge to traditional notions about femininity and female limitations.
 
Thomas describes the women employed in the defense industries—how they were recruited and trained, where they worked and under what conditions, and what changes employers made in the workplace to accommodate women, She also discusses the experience of the women who served as volunteers in the Ground Observer Corps, the Citizens’ Service Corps, the Red Cross, and other volunteer agencies. In addition, the author considers how homemakers coped during a time of rationing, housing shortages, lack of schools, and inadequate medical facilities.
 
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front cover of Stepping Out of the Shadows
Stepping Out of the Shadows
Alabama Women, 1819–1990
Mary Martha Thomas
University of Alabama Press, 1995
Investigates the place of women from the perspective of race, class, and gender

The history of Alabama has been told, but most often in terms of white men and their politics and economics. Now a more complex story of the state is emerging from the shadows of history in a new book that investigates the place of women from the perspective of race, class, and gender. Stepping Out of the Shadows, is a compilation of articles first presented at the 1990 Alabama Women’s History Forum in Birmingh, and edited by Mary Martha Thomas. The writers discuss the lives of women in antebellum Alabama and reexamine the roles of both black and white women as missionaries during Reconstruction, as reformers and suffrage leaders in the Progressive era, and as members of the state legislature in the 20th century.
 
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