ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of the political spaces in which a socialist woman’s politics could be made— consumption. The issue for socialist women was to what extent this notion of what constituted the political agenda gave due recognition to the degree to which everyday life was gendered and hence the importance of what came to be seen as ‘women’s issues’. Socialism and shopping are not words or practices which are usually seen as connected. Shopping for the requirements of a household, particularly for food, rarely features in discussions of socialist strategy. The socialist press carried adverts for a number of different ventures where goods were produced or distributed in aid of the party/movement. More specifically, some socialist women, like Margaretta Hicks, tried to develop a politics of consumption as a space in which women could access socialist ideas, while a few tried to imagine a socialism in which a politics of consumption was properly integrated.
