Domestic Technology In The Past

Domestic Technology in the past

There is information about the history of domestic technology and its effect on gender involvement in the home (ca 1850 - 1990). These are mainly changing standards, the nature of family life, and new roles for women in the home. Instead of removing housework, domestic technology accompanied to a re-definition of how this work must be organized and done.

Housework in the 19th century

The 19th century home

The organization, physical effort and tools that were used to do housework before modern family equipment became available, were the result of a home life based on mutual cooperation. The family in the 19th century was a unit of production. Today the family is mainly a unit of consumption.

Many of the tools needed for their daily demand were produced at home and purchases were a short list of goods: tea, coffee and sugar were expensive and carefully used. Metal items like stoves, pots, tools and guns were bought because only talented artisans were able to make them. Many other tools like wood spoons and washboards were made when the family settled.

In villages, services like heat, water and rubbish cleaners had to be provided and maintained daily by the family whose devices were tools but not machines. Women were responsible for the growing, buying and preparation of the family.

Especially in villages, jobs were divided between the men and women. For couples who always stay at home, marriage was a survival. When the home became modern, this mutual cooperation became lost. Men cared for the wheat and growing the linen, and women took care of the garden. Men cut and pulled the wood for fires, women did cooking. Some jobs like carrying water, milking and peeling apples were done by men and women.

Changing roles of women in the home

In general, the finding of tools by the different classes of families showed the number of servants that every family employed.

For the upper class, the first tools to be bought were radiators, cigar lighters, coffee and tea pots. Less important tools like washing machines came later, when having a tool became a sign of their social status.

In middle-class homes, female family members were the main manpower and the servants were employed to do only the most difficult jobs. Buying a tool was depended on its price, effectiveness and security.

Married working-class women were forced to work outside home or in the manufacturing compaines as servants, and their first meeting with the tools was as a result of working for someone else. Electrification of the home and electric tools were not reachable for most working women.

1910-1920

During this time rich families didn’t show noticable changes. Most of them had electric tools, but they were not fulled with this tools.

Despite the little domestic staff during the years of war, most homes were not equipped with electric washing machines. Even if manpower-saving tools were available, not all servants accepted them. Than the mistress of the house found more work to be done when servants finished their job early.

The middle-class housewife was still an important target of the market because the time and manpower-saving abilities of electrical technology were important for her.

Electricity

1890 - 1910

By 1890, builders had established electrical generating facilities in all Canada. Electric technology needed the finding of a method of distribution before it could be used. As a result, the first customers were in or near city centers. In 1910, Berlin (Kitchener), Ontario became the first city hall to be connected to the public power network. In Ontario this power network was supplied by the government; in Quebec it was supplied privately.

From 1890 to 1910 more experiments with electric technology as an alternative to traditional

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