The “Industrial Revolution” in the Home

2018/03/09 by Ruth Schwartz Cowan · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Fashion and Cultural Textiles #Architecture, Design, and Social History #Gender, Feminism, and Media

paper · doi:10.1201/9781315180472-7

openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex publication_date 2018/03/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15

Abstract

Between 1900 and 1930, a major revolution in social and technological tools with which housework was done took place. Examining business statistics, demographic information, and advertising in women’s magazines, this chapter analyzes how the “industrial revolution” in the home and the modernization of household technology led to a new genre of middle-class housewife—one who no longer served as a manager of servants but who performed the servant’s tasks herself. The chapter points to the role of advertising as a mediating agent in this process, as women were both encouraged to embrace their new role and chastised for shortcomings that, as advertisers stated, could be overcome through consumption of the advertised products.

Cited by

• Gender and the residential telephone, 1890?1940: Technologies of sociability
• Nelly Don’s 1916 pink gingham apron frock: an illustration of the middle-class American housewife’s shifting role from producer to consumer
• Feminist science and technology studies [wikipedia]

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• Advertising in Life Magazine and the Encouragement of Suburban Ideals
• Modernizing the Manileña: Technologies of conspicuous consumption for the well-to-do woman,circa1880s–1930s
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• Baby, You Can Drive My Car: Advertising Women's Freedom in 1920s America
• The Housewife and Her Labour Under Capitalism