The Industrial Revolution In The Home – Ruth Schwartz Cowan

 From today’s point of view, we can barely imagine that only a few decades ago, women were washing clothes in a tub or had to lit fire in the stove in order to cook a meal. It seems to us that the introduction of tools such as the washing machine, the iron or the electric stove must have been a real revolution in the way housewives performed their daily tasks – and we intuitively assume, that these new technologies improved their lives. How this industrial revolution in the home has taken place and in what way the changes that occurred were fundamentally different from what we expect, Schwartz Cowan describes in her text The “Industrial Revolution” in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century. The article was published in 1976 in the magazine Technology and Culture . Ruth Schwartz Cowan, born in 1941, is a historian of science, technology and medicine. Her research does not only include question of gender in reference to technology, but also addresses topics such as genetics and social policy or the history of reproduction. Schwartz Cowan is today Professor Emerita at both the State University of New York and the University of Pennsylvania. (University of Pennsylvania, 2014) 

The traditional interpretation of the industrialisation and its impact on the home developed in the 1920s. It describes how the household was reduced to the core family and how the societal functions of the family diminished. According to this functionalist approach, the dissolvement of the housewives’ tasks led to woman entering the labour market, suffering from role anxiety or demanding liberation (Schwartz Cowan 1976, 1-2). Schwartz Cowan does not only disagree with this understanding, but also criticises its way of comparing families of different social status and in various places to one another. She claims that we must track these developments separately, in order to gain a valid understanding of social transformations. Thus, she bases her research on the analysis of the changes that occurred for middle-class woman in the United States. 

By analysing articles and advertisements of women’s magazines, Schwartz Cowan finds that the electrification marked the beginning of the quick and vast changes that she calls the Industrial Revolution in the home. Electric appliances such as the washing machine became important parts of the American home during the 1920s. With this technical transformation, a shift in ideology occurred as well. The new routines of personal hygiene led to a “bathroom mania” and this again caused a mass production of elements for the standard American bathroom. It is evident that technical and social changes are closely interrelated. This duality of change implies that some chores were eliminated, but simultaneously new ones were added to the housewife’s scope. Schwartz Cowan illustrates this with a wide range of examples throughout the text. One crucial point she touches is the topic of servants in the home. Up to the 19th century, most households relied on either paid or unpaid servants and the housewife occupied the role of a manager overlooking the household. Unmarried daughters or sisters, who in previous times would have worked as unpaid aids, entered the labour market as part of the industrial revolution. Therefore, the entire housekeeping duties were imposed on the housewife herself. Schwartz Cowan identifies three main fields within the new tasks of the housewife, namely childcare, household economy and cleanliness. Women were supposed to educate themselves in these fields. This is where the advertisers come into play. 

In the advertising of goods, Schwartz Cowan detects a connection between structural and ideological changes. Advertisers were tied to the manufacturers producing the household goods, but also to the consumers who spent a lot of money on maintaining their household. As she says, “the advertisers probably did not initiate the changes, but they certainly encouraged them” (Schwartz Cowan 1976, 21). In the advertisements below, it can be seen how housewives were put under pressure to perform their duties as expected by society by introducing the notions of guilt and embarrassment. The field of housework was slowly emotionalized, it became an expression of love, family loyalty and affection. 

“Mum” for personal cleanliness (1920)
Claiming that a real mother needs to buy this product

The Hoover (National Geographic 1920)
Cleanliness of the home is linked to the pride of the housewife

Listerine (Ladies’ Home Journal 1928)
Feelings of embarrassment are evoked

Schwartz Cowan links this emotionalization to the fact that time spent on chores was not reduced at the beginning of the 20th century, despite all the newly introduced technologies. However, in our opinion, she does not consider the full extent of what this emotionalization of housework meant for women. Stronger words to explain and criticise housework as an act of love can be found in Silvia Federici’s text Wages Against Housework that was written in 1975: 

“By denying housework a wage and transforming it into an act of love, capital has killed many birds with one stone. First of all, it has gotten a hell of a lot of work al-most for free, and it has made sure that woman, far from struggling against it, would seek that work as the best thing in life”

Federici 1975, 17

Federici directly links housework as an act of love to capitalist society and describes how the emotionalization led to the impossibility to refuse to perform housework for free. Schwartz Cowan does not consider the notion of the emotionalised housework in this broader perspective. However, by interlinking housework with the industrial revolution she takes the first steps towards claiming housework as part of the labour force. 

“It seems odd to speak of an “industrial revolution” connected with housework, odd because we are talking about the technology of such homely things, and odd be-cause we are not accustomed to thinking of housewives as a labor force or of housework as an economic commodity – but despite this oddity, I think the term is altogether appropriate”

Schwartz Cowan 1976, 9

She applies the common questions about the consequences of mechanisation to the household and comes to an astonishing conclusion: The industrialisation of the home has led to the exact opposite of what has happened to other means of production after their mechanization. The structure of domestic labour became less differentiated, but the workers more specialised, managerial functions decreased, and the emotional context became increasingly important. 

This conclusion we find quite striking. On one hand she paves the way for a new field of research on “The implication of this phenomenon, the proletarianization of a work force that had previously seen itself as predominantly managerial” (Schwartz Cowan 1976, 23) and its connection to the women’s liberation movement. But on the other hand, a lot of questions remain unanswered in Schwartz Cowan’s text, as she only addresses a specific part of society. Can this analysis be applied to families of other statuses? What other sources could be used to verify her observations? How has this impact evolved since the 1920s? There is certainly a lot to be explored on the new conception of household and technology even today. 

Reference list: 

Schwartz Cowan, Ruth. 1976. “The “Industrial Revolution” in the Home: Household Technolo-gy and Social Change in the 20th Century.” Technology and Culture, vol 17, no. 1: 1-23 

University of Pennsylvania. 2014. “Cowan CV Aug 2014”. https://hss.sas.upenn.edu/people/ruth-schwartz-cowan. 

Federici, Silvia. 2012. “Wages Against Housework”. In Revolution at Point Zero. Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle, 13-62. Brooklyn: Common Notions. 

Image 1: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/beauty-and-hygiene-ads-1920s/6 

Image 2: National Geographic. 1920. https://www.hoover.co.uk/en_GB/born-innovators 

Image 3: Ladies’ Home Journal. 1928. Schwartz Cowan, Ruth. 1976. “The “Industrial Revolution” in the Home: Household Technolo-gy and Social Change in the 20th Century.” Technology and Culture, vol 17, no. 1: 1-23