4 ms·

> One of my favorite counterintuitive examples: The biggest economic gains from the 1800s Industrial Revolution actually came from the humble washer/dryer. By m

> One of my favorite counterintuitive examples: The biggest economic gains from the 1800s Industrial Revolution actually came from the humble washer/dryer. By making routine homeware 100x more efficient, this (along with other home appliances) allowed more women to enter the labor force, nearly doubling labor force participation within a couple generations. Though, at the beginning, lots of people were opining about homemakers losing a sense of purpose or relaxing all the time. What exactly did your professors mean by "economic gain"? It'd probably take an entire thesis to unpack what that means and all the ambiguities that anyone could drive a train through. The only way I can square that circle is if they meant that women's economic prospects declined so much with the automation of textiles that they had nothing left but small efficiency gains. Maintenance tasks like clothes washing don't produce any economic value outside the household, whereas spinning/weaving/sewing produces something the household can sell, trade, or gift. Early textile mechanization took place decades before washing machines were even a novelty so sure, "biggest economic gain" as long as you're measuring from a local maxima.

pixl97 1y ago
Spinning and weaving had always been done by a relatively small portion of society. Hence by automating it you were not bringing time savings to the vast majority of people. Instead the opposite may have occurred, when cloth became cheaper and the amount of clothing increased greatly increasing the amount of washing the masses had to do.
- throwup238 1y ago
  > Spinning and weaving had always been done by a relatively small portion of society. This is very, very incorrect. Egregiously so. All evidence from antiquity to pre-modern Europe contradicts it. Up until the mechanization of textiles, spinning and weaving took up the majority of women’s work time. Even noblewomen were painted doing the act. Annual labor hours were comparable to unskilled men in agriculture, even after mechanical innovations. If you’d like I can give you academic citations but acoup.blog written by an actual historian just ran an entire series on this topic: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivd-spinning-plates/ https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-an... Subsistence for a small family meant nearly 1800 hours a year of work on just textiles, accounting for a single woman’s labor over an entire year. That’s just 200 hours short of a modern 9-5 work year. On just textiles.
- triceratops 1y ago
  All women in a household spent their free time spinning, weaving, sewing, mending, and knitting. Even noblewomen. Clothing made by professionals was a niche product, probably only available to royalty.

pixl97 1y ago

Spinning and weaving had always been done by a relatively small portion of society. Hence by automating it you were not bringing time savings to the vast majority of people. Instead the opposite may have occurred, when cloth became cheaper and the amount of clothing increased greatly increasing the amount of washing the masses had to do.

throwup238 1y ago
> Spinning and weaving had always been done by a relatively small portion of society. This is very, very incorrect. Egregiously so. All evidence from antiquity to pre-modern Europe contradicts it. Up until the mechanization of textiles, spinning and weaving took up the majority of women’s work time. Even noblewomen were painted doing the act. Annual labor hours were comparable to unskilled men in agriculture, even after mechanical innovations. If you’d like I can give you academic citations but acoup.blog written by an actual historian just ran an entire series on this topic: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivd-spinning-plates/ https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-an... Subsistence for a small family meant nearly 1800 hours a year of work on just textiles, accounting for a single woman’s labor over an entire year. That’s just 200 hours short of a modern 9-5 work year. On just textiles.
triceratops 1y ago
All women in a household spent their free time spinning, weaving, sewing, mending, and knitting. Even noblewomen. Clothing made by professionals was a niche product, probably only available to royalty.