“Women work particularly well in community organizations”: Cultivating Community and Consumerism in the Comanche County REA Women’s Club, 1939-1940

From 1939 to 1941, the US Rural Electrification Administration conducted a nationwide educational campaign to share the benefits of electricity with rural Americans, known as the Electric Farm Equipment Show. A key part of the show was a series of appliance schools, which were run by female home economists and designed for a female audience. This article examines an appliance school organized for one REA women's club and the efforts of officials like REA chief home electrification specialist Clara O. Nale to navigate the disconnect between the official REA project, which assumed a gendered division of labor, and the real needs of the farm women they served. Through the Comanche County REA Women's Club, the article explores how REA administrators imagined that women would participate in its cooperative-led electrification efforts, women's engagement with and resistance to the REA's programming, and how technology adoption was ultimately mediated through women's priorities.