Looking back at some of the stories we have read, it seems that women were challenged with making ends meet in creative ways that had never been tried before. Everything from making clothing from potato sacks, trying out new recipes with foods their families were unaccustomed to, even inventing a way to eat tumbleweed canned in brine  (Worst, p. 162), and finding ways to block out the dust that seeped into homes was a daily struggle. They had to nurse family members sick with dust pneumonia and tend to children who couldn't attend school because they might get trapped there by a duster and be unable to get back home (Worst, p. 172). Women also found work outside the homes when their husbands were unable to raise crops to sell; they took in sewing, worked as domestic staff, even taught school - sometimes for scrip that later proved worthless. (Worst, p.167) There are many examples in A Square Meal of social workers and home economists doing their best to prevent malnutrition and starvation by working with aid programs, creating recipes, spreading information about nutrition/vitamins, pushing for school lunch programs...The women were busy night and day.

Women have always held their families together.  The Depression called for women to step up in new ways.  They were called upon to find ways to feed their families, help financially and invent ways to secure their homes from dust!  Food and money were in major issues that required women to come up with new ideas.  These same women had to invent ways to protect their homes from the dust invasion. 
Women created new recipes to make use of what they had and what they found out had the most nutritional value.  They went into this season not knowing about calories or nutrition.  That is a lot to take in!  

An example of financial struggles is Caroline Henderson.  She broke with tradition and graduated from college.  Then she fell in love with a farmer in what turned into No Man’s land.  Their marriage started on a high with bumper wheat crop but it went down hill fast!  She had to muster the will to stay.  She was reduced to gathering cow chips for fuel but still he stayed.

Women also became involved in finding solutions.  Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in putting together “women executives.”  She also held all-women press conferences.  This shows that women were joining professional careers like never before.  

One of the biggest roles for women was keeping the family healthy.  The Worst Hard Time devotes quite a bit of information to sharing how women kept dust, often unsuccessfully, from invading their homes.  It seemed like enough coverings and layers would stop the piles from making it inside, but women were continuously creating new ideas to improve the situation.  I think it's hard for us to fathom exactly what it would be like to live through this and persevere.

At home, they managed household budgets more tightly, grew their own food in gardens, and made clothes to save money. This highlights another difficult area- the continued need to feed the family.  Women came up with new and creative ways of trying to keep a garden alive, sometimes also unsuccessfully.  I am amazed that they were able to can the tumbleweeds to survive, but I think the most astounding food was the canning of rabbit meat.  Women became innovators in using what was available to survive.

Women also found ways to help the family overcome losing everything.  As the years progressed, families had to do with less and less.  The book mentions one child who was wearing the only option available- sack cloth.  As men lost their jobs, women stepped up to fill the gaps by working in factories, as teachers, and in various service jobs, often for lower wages, or as one example in the book mentioned, for no wages.   

Additionally, women organized community efforts such as food drives and local charities to help those in need. These actions not only provided immediate relief to struggling families but also gradually changed societal views on women's roles, highlighting their importance in both the workforce and the home during a challenging time in American history.

Based on both readings, women were in charge of the traditional housekeeping during this era. Both of the books focus on the increasingly impossible task of women feeding their families, even when there was little to no income or food to be found. There were ways that the government supported this, but oftentimes it seems that it was questionable. The importance of balanced nutrition was becoming clear, but sharing this information didn’t mean that citizens could or would follow it. Women had to find new ways to feed their families, with new recipes, new food sources, or through charity. It seems that this incredibly important task fell almost entirely on the shoulders of women.

I love that Eleanor Roosevelt made the decision to bring home economics to the White House. At present I think we see politicians passing laws for the American people, yet somehow, they don’t think it applies to them. Here is a woman with convictions knowing if other people could survive, so could she. Though it didn’t make her husband happy, or the guests that dined at the White House, it showed that she wasn’t above everyday citizens. It also sent a message to women that they could contribute to society in a time of crisis. Yes, much feel on the shoulders of women during this time.

Some of the things that were up to the women were
- Trying the Cornell diet
- Healthy eating
- Self-denial
- Decreasing reliance on material things
- Cooking with little food supply or money to buy more

Shannon M.

It was up to women to provide a healthy and nutritionally-balanced diet for herself and the family to ensure that they have the strength to complete their tasks. This is not a novel concept since women have always been taking care of the family and household. The Great Depression gave women more opportunities to implement their skills outside of the home by providing data regarding food budgets and calorie intake to the government. When the news of surplus cattle and pigs were slaughtered and left to decompose in the Mississippi and Chicago rail yards, people were furious. While it is considered a luxury to only eat the "favorable" parts of the animal and forgo the offal, needlessly killing livestock when the nation is malnourished is irresponsible to say the least. 

Women were then tasked to come up with ways to store large quantities of meat for long periods of time. Canning was one of the main methods while refrigeration become more commonplace as electricity became available in rural America. Women were also coming up with new recipes that either brought old traditions to the New World (such as the Polish and Scandinavian women in Michigan) or made eating more exciting with different ingredient combinations.

In the past, I have often found myself considering the close-knit role between women and food through the lens of TV dinners.  Confusing, right?  Let me explain:  Large food companies had long sought to create ready-made meals prior to World War II – I guess sort of the natural evolution of those delicatessen meals people in the big cities would buy that were mentioned in “A Square Meal.”  As refrigeration and freezer technology improved, these companies wanted to sell people these ready-made frozen meals as convenience items – convenience items that cost more than what someone could make from a bunch of individual parts fresh at home.  Prior to World War II it had been a hard sell, but following World War II it became easier.  Why?  As with all things, there were many reasons, but one major reason was that women were now in the workforce and were not able to be at home cooking all day as in the past.  Therefore, these convenience items finally had a place.  Additionally, freezers and refrigerators were improving and were more affordable – people also had more money for various reasons:  post-war boom, women working alongside men who had returned from the war, more jobs, etc.  And finally, the food preservation companies finally had something to market the ready-made meals alongside:  the TV.  Come home from work exhausted, heat up a ready-made meal, and eat it while you relax and watch TV.  It’s all very modern.

Women also joined the workforce during World War I as men left to go fight overseas.  We got the right to vote following that war (better than a TV dinner in my opinion, but to each their own).  The world of refrigeration and freezers and TV Dinners was still a ways away at that point, so I guess we’d just have to settle for the humdrum of finally being part of the political process in this country.  Obviously I half-jest with this section, but my point here is that prior to reading these books and being a part of this book study, I had never really stopped and considered the Great Depression in this flow of events.  It had made sense that in World War I women had stepped into jobs left by men who had gone to war and had gained some independence and a toehold in the public spheres men had long dominated.  Following that war and the proof that women could operate in the public sphere, women gained the right to vote.  During World War II, women once again had to do jobs that men had to abandon to go fight for the country.  This gave them a foothold in the public sphere and allowed women to start working outside the home.  Following that companies began marketing convenience so that working women could continue providing for their families despite being out of the home.  But what about that in between time?

The Great Depression hit all aspects of life hard, and while primarily rooted in business and economy, it impacted how people lived and how they were able to survive – and at the very bottom of things, far back as time immemorial, food is needed to survive.  Therefore, Eleanor Roosevelt was certainly on to something when she wrote a book entitled It’s Up to the Women.  When the public sphere dominated by men fails, the private sphere dominated by women is the last line of defense.  Once again, women were called up as a stopgap measure in a time of need, and once again the support and perpetuation of the populace was their very important job.  After all, regardless of whether wars are won or lost, there are still people left behind that need to be fed, comforted, clothed, and given shelter – things long relegated to the woman’s wheelhouse.  With the public sphere that men had long populated alone decimated by the Great Depression, it is little wonder then that the focus shifted to the private sphere that women had so much influence on.

Making what little money there was stretch further, using homemaking skills such as canning and sewing to preserve things beyond their shelf-life, making marvelous meals out of meager means (on a daily basis, no less), making ends meet, stretching budgets, finding ways to be creative and self-sufficient, etc. – all of this came down to the women, while men fought the war of finding work outside the home.  Women were once again holding the fort on the home front, maintaining what semblance of normalcy they could while providing whatever they could to ensure the comfort and survival of the populace at large.  Additionally, while it would make sense that opportunities for women to work would have shrunk or disappeared during this time, it makes equal sense that since money was tight, if women could get work alongside men they would take this opportunity to help themselves and their families.  Ultimately, what I believe we saw in this time was another event that blurred the lines between the public and private spheres that men and women once occupied separately and proof that in the toughest of times it is not gender that matters, but humanity.

Many things were “up to the women” during the Depression. All things food-related were, of course, already within the purview of women, from the grocery shopping and meal planning to the actual preparation and serving of the food. This expanded to include more budgeting and household management work during the Depression due to the need to stretch budgets and find creative ways to make things work, from sewing and patching clothes to finding creative ways to stretch a meal and make it wholesome (if not delicious). A Square Meal describes government cooking classes as being well-attended: “they trained a corps of unemployed women to serve as visiting housekeepers who went from home to home teaching women how to select ‘nutritious and palatable foods’ and prepare them in ‘simple and appetizing combinations’” (Ziegelman and Coe, 176). 

Women in living in the Dust Bowl not only had to feed their families, but they also had the impossible task of trying to keep their homes clean--not for aesthetic purposes, but to make it safe for habitation. Dusters continually blew layers of dust inside homes, coating everything. Women headed the efforts to fight the dust back and keep their families from getting a variety of breathing sicknesses: silicosis, tuberculosis, laryngitis, bronchitis, sinusitis, and dust pneumonia. These illnesses claimed the lives of many.  According to Egan “In Dodge City, Kansas, the Health Board counted only thirteen dust-free days in the first four months of 1935” (Egan, 173). He goes on to say that “The Red Cross declared a medical crisis across the High Plains in 1935” (174). I have a hard enough time cleaning up a house of teenagers and pets; I cannot imagine the crushing stress these women felt battling never ending piles of dust day in and day out, knowing that too much exposure to it could lead to their families getting sick and possibly dying. Reading about the shrieking woman Judge Cowen had committed and Lizzie White just pulls at your heart!

Women also played a role in combatting the broader side effects of the Depression by doing volunteer work outside the home, especially through local relief efforts. At a time when nearly everyone was impacted by the economic downturn, those grassroots efforts had an impact. Michigan, for example, had canning drives, where women would preserve and give away canned food (Ziegelman and Coe, 185). As jobs were lost by men, women also started entering the workforce in greater numbers.