The humble washing machine

Image under CC from Pixabay

These days we don't give a second thought to the question of whether women should be allowed to vote or run for office. The changes that took place between now and roughly a 100 to 150 years ago are often attributed to civil rights movements that brought the issue to the forefront of politics and general consciousness. Civil rights movements did help bring about change, but I can't help wondering whether household appliances played a more substantial part in the acceptance of greater role for women in the workforce, in politics and science, and, in society as a whole. Ha-Joon Chang writes in pages 34-36 of his book, 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism (emphasis mine): 

Washing machines have saved mountains of time. The data are not easy to comy by, but a mid 1940s study by the US Rural Electrification Authority reports that, with the introduction of the electric washing machine and the electric iron, the time required for washing a 38 lb load of laundry was reduced by a factor of nearly 6 (from 4 hours to 41 minutes) and the time taken to iron it by a factor of more than 2,5 (from 4,5 hours to 1,75 hours). Piped water has meant that women do not have to spend hours fetching water (for which, according to the United Nations Development Program, up to two hours per day are spent in some developing countries). Vacuum cleaners have enabled us to clean our houses more thoroughly in a fraction of the time that was needed in the old days, when we had to do it with broom and rags. Gas/electric kitchen stoves and central heating have vastly reduced the time needed for collecting firewood, making fires, keeping fires alive, and cleaning after them for heating and cooking purposes. 

The emergence of household appliances, as well as electricity, piped water and piped gas, has totally transformed the way women, and consequently men, live. They have made it possible for far more women to join the labor market. For example, in the US, the proportion of married white women in prime working ages (35-44) who work outside the home rose from a few per cent in the late 1890s to nearly 80 per cent today. It has also changed the female occupational structure dramatically by allowing society to get by with far fewer people working as domestic servants, as we have seen above - for example, in the 1870s, nearly 50 per cent of women employed in the US were employed as 'servants and waitresses' (most of whom we can take to have been servants rather than waitresses, given that eating out was not yet a big business). Increased labour market participation has definitely raised the status of women at home and in society, thus also reducing preference for male children and increasing investment in female education, which then further increases female labour market participation. Even those educated women who in the end choose to stay at home with their children have higher status at home, as they can make credible threats that they can support themselves should they decide to leave their partners. With outside employment opportunities, the opportunity costs of children have risen, making families have fewer children. All of these have changed the traditional family dynamics. Taken together, they constitute really powerful changes. 

Of course, I am not saying that these changes have happened only - or even predominantly - because of changes in household technologies. The 'pill' and other contraceptives have had a powerful impact on female education and labour market participation by allowing women to control the timing and the frequency of their childbirths. And there are non-technological causes. Even with the same household technologies, countries can have quite different female labour market participation ratios and different occupation structures, depending on things like social conventions regarding the acceptability of middle-class women working (poor women have always worked), tax incentives paid for work and child rearing, and the affordability of childcare. Having said all this, however, it is still true that, without the washing machine (and other labour-saving household technologies), the scale of change in the role of women in society and in family dynamics would not have been nearly as dramatic.

I quoted Chang not to pick a fight with feminists, but to show that everything is not always as it seems. Background processes and developments lay the foundations for future change. In the example above the Second Industrial Revolution, as the spread of electricity and common household appliances is generally referred to, is what laid the seeds for women to become more independent and respected in society. Often we take these developments for granted. For example, the standardized shipping container has made movement of cargo worldwide faster and more efficient. Ships, trucks and rail cars are designed with standard specifications in mind. This allows for transportation without having to offload and re-load the cargo at each step of they way (which would be necessary if for example a container that came off a ship wouldn't fit on the back of a truck). As far as the book itself is concerned, it is nothing earth shattering but it's definitely an interesting read, especially as a refresher that capitalism is not without faults, nor is it the only driving engine behind the improvement in well-being we've seen over the last 200 years. If you interested in the book, I would recommend reading reviews of Amazon, they're much more informative than my two sentence summary.