Chapter Five Doing Domestic Time
The washing machine has changed the world more than the Internet has.
H a-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism
Advances in technology have transformed the work that goes on in the household. Indeed, it is not too much to claim that an industrial revolution occurred in the home, that “the change from the laundry tub to the washing machine is no less profound than the change from the hand loom to the power loom.”1 As in other spheres, considerable optimism has attached to the possibility that technology may provide the solution to time-consuming drudgery.
Many economists and sociologists have argued that it is precisely the time-saving properties of domestic technologies that freed women to enter the labor force. For example, Ha-Joon Chang argues that household appliances, such as the washing machine, have been revolutionary in that they liberated women from doing tedious housework and led to the demise of the domestic servant.2 While such arguments can tend toward technological determinism, they are refreshing in attributing significance to what are generally regarded as mundane household artifacts.
This chapter will explore the relationship between domestic technology and the time households allocate to domestic work (leaving ICTs largely to the next chapter). In particular, I will grapple with the conundrum that devices allegedly designed to save labor time fail to do so, and in some cases actually increase the time needed for the task.
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