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[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

For example, women were often employed as "human computers." Doing the maths for larger projects.

Why did computing and those roles become more male dominated? Because the pay went up and men sought that pay. The male power aggression aspect edged women out. Nothing to do with cognitive ability. Men in competition with other men feel they need the money.

It was a little more complicated than that. Actually, a lot more complicated.

Women were pushed out of many positions in computing & many other fields because traditionally women were routinely fired from their jobs when they got pregnant. This was lawful to do in most jurisdictions. Moreover, in many jurisdictions and/or lines of work, women had to cease paid employment outside the home once they got married. Sometimes this was by law; sometimes it was by company policy, union rules and professional or industry standards; & sometimes it was by social convention. In many cases, it was all of those factors combined at once.

Also, after World War II was over, women in countries like the US and UK were fired en masse from the jobs in computing, defense & nearly all other industries that they had held during wartime because their governments decided the jobs the women had be doing rightfully belonged to the men who had served in the military and now were returning to the civilian workforce.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think I agree with all of that. There is also the white goods revolution in the 20th century. "Homemaking" stopped being the job it was. Child rearing very much still is a job.

The surplus labour from white goods pulled women into the work place. Also just as house work was eased hard labour was eased and work became less arduous in general. Fair take?

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It might be a fair take, but it's not one I think is all that accurate.

An important factor (of many) you are overlooking is that during WW1 and WW2, & the Great Depression in between, the vast number of people in the US and UK who would have spent their lives working as domestic servants (as housemaids, cooks, scullery maids & kitchen staff, laundresses, valets, personal maids, drivers, errand-doers, nursemaids, governesses, butlers, personal secretaries, household managers & so on) found that opportunities to go into other lines of work opened up to them - & that in many places there was less chance to land relatively well-paying jobs as professional domestic servants because of all the formerly very wealthy upper-crust who'd lost fortunes, or whose fortunes had been greatly diminished. This vastly changed things both for the ultra rich who lived in the vast mansions of the top tiers of the upper class (as seen in TV & films like & Upstairs, Downstairs; The Remains of The Day; & Downton Abbey) as well as in the far more modest homes of middle class people.

For example, prior to the two wars, lots of middle class families relied on live-out hired help such as "a regular girl" or two who did most of the household cleaning, & also on (mostly) women who came in to homes to cook, bake & do laundry. At the same time, a lot of home cooking, baking & laundry was contracted out to workers who undertook those tasks in their own homes or in communal, commercial facilities.

My understanding is that in the 20th century, the opposite to what you say happened actually occurred: homemaking didn't cease "being the job it was" in the past as you put it; rather, "homemaking" became a FT job that individual "housewives" were expected to do all on their own, with no help or with only very occasional help (such as a cleaning person coming in once every two weeks, occasional babysitters & perhaps a baby nurse who'd be hired to stay over for the first two weeks after MC women gave birth).

Similarly, the introduction in the 20th century to homes of such features as indoor plumbing, modern "bathrooms," a plethora of new household appliances like electric vacuum cleaners & washing machines for laundry & steam irons, plus a vast array of brand-new cleaning & laundry products & tools, went hand in hand with the rise of increasingly higher, more demanding, exacting & finicky standards of household & personal hygiene.

When people shat & peed in outhouses, the outdoors, "chamber pots" or portable "stools," there actually was a lot less clean-up than today. When the modern indoor plumbed toilet became a standard part of the the average home - & the toilet came to be placed in the same room where people bathed, brushed their teeth & kept their "medicine cabinets" - there suddenly was a brand-new need to keep the toilet & the area around it sparkling clean. And it was women who got saddled with this new chore.

Similarly, in the 20th century when many people went from taking a bath only once a week, or even more rarely, to bathing or showering every day, sometimes several times a day, & to washing their hair on a very frequent basis as well, it ended up creating a whole lot more work for whomever it was that was tasked with keeping home bathrooms clean. Which in most cases were the "housewives" whose domestic duties you claim became less onerous.

The upshot was that that house work for the average "housewife" actually became more, not less, arduous & time-consuming over the course of the 20th century.

Yet at the same time, a myth arose that, as you put it, "house work was eased" for women - a myth that was gladly embraced & spread by men who were not tasked with doing any housework & had no effing idea of what it involved. But of course, the source of the myth that "house work was eased" in the 20th century were the big corporations manufacturing & peddling all the new appliances & cleaning & laundry products whose adverts sold women - & everyone else - on the idea of ever-more exacting standards of household & personal hygiene.

The myth that women's domestic burdens were getting lighter & easier as they were actually getting heavier & more difficult to pull off to served to gaslight and further demoralize the women stuck doing all the unpaid house work that supposedly has become so much easier & less time-consuming than in the past.

Today, of course, the domestic servant class of past eras has been recreated, albeit in different ways, by modern-day immigration policies, take-out food, & all the shopping & delivery services, errand services, meal kits, prepared meal/food subscription services, household cleaning services and so on that have been made possible by the internet. Most people today don't employ household cooks, laundresses & valets, FT housekeepers or chauffeurs any more. But plenty of people today are reliant on food that is prepared elsewhere & delivered to their homes or workplaces by low-paid workers on quick order; on dry cleaners & "wash & fold" to take care of the laundry; on household cleaners who work as day laborers; on Uber & Lyft & local car services to get around; & on shopping & ordering services that will deliver groceries, beverages including booze, pharmacy products & pretty much everything & anything else directly to the doors of homes & right to people's desks at work.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

OK well I think I disagree with this assessment and I think it goes against a lot of economic and sociological research.

With the exception of child rearing and child care the 20th century had an explosion of machines in the home, office, factory, farm that all eased labour demands. This labour was re purposed. To see it as anything else don't make economic or sociological sense.

Housework Now Takes Much Less Time: 85 Years of US Rural Women's Time Use

Abstract Based on her analysis of published tables from US homemakers’ 1924–32 week-long time use diaries collected by the US Department of Agriculture, Vanek (1974) concluded that housework time had not declined over the previous half-century—despite the diffusion of many “time-saving” home technologies. Although frequently challenged, this claim still survives in parts of the sociological literature; we use newly available evidence to refute it. Analysis of the original USDA diaries (many of which have now been recovered from the US National Archives), alongside more recent diary microdata from the American Heritage Time Use Study, reveals a pair of clear and contrary trends: a continuing decline in women's core housework (cooking and cleaning), partially offset by an increase of time in childcare and shopping. Names and addresses attached to the original diaries allow the identification of more than 93 percent of the USDA diarists in one or both of the 1920 and 1930 US Federal Censuses. Analysis (Oaxaca decomposition) of the household- and individual-level information from this source shows that most of the historical time shifts result not from changes in family demography or women's growing attachment to paid work over this period but from “behavioral” change, reflecting in part the spread of labor-saving domestic technology.

Hans Rosling And Ha-Joon Chang Agree, The Washing Machine Is A More Important Invention Than The Internet

There has been a decline in marriage and living together over the same period. People live alone more. The practicalities of living alone have gone up due to the change in household technology and consumerism. People did not start living alone at the same time as housework become more demanding.

Machines needs more time goes against time goes against the very utility of them. Housework was gruelling as often was the workplace.