Apparently women have also been liberated to buy terrifying leather jodhpurs.

Jevons paradox may explain this (wikipedia article linked to name). Efficiency rises actually often increase the demand for a resource, for various reasons. Mainly, because people can do more with less, they demand even more, and more people become interested in the activity. When people switched from dialup to broadband, they did not spend 1/5th the time online that they used to, even though their connection probably got that much faster.

That's not to say more efficient devices are, by nature, wasteful. They have the potential to reduce consumption OR increase production, with only a small window of space where both can happen. It's human nature to demand more production, in this case meaning that cleaner homes and clothes are demanded and thus the women end up working on more cleaning.

Still, this does nothing to explain why men won't pitch in. I think the real message is what you said: Efficiency may rise, but it's a decoy; Women are still left with the jobs other members of the household won't take.

I'd assume that whoever wrote the ad copy was... male. Maybe he was trying really hard to genuinely understand the whole "women's lib thing" (and the text illustrates how far there was yet to go) or maybe he was intentionally trying to subvert it; hard to say.

From the post: "From what I understand, however, as women’s cleaning became more efficient, standards of cleanliness rose. So even as time-saving devices were introduced, the time women spent cleaning did not substantially change. "

The same thing happened in offices, for both men and women. As copying machines, computers, and other techno-gizmos were making office work more efficient, I certainly didn't notice a corresponding reduction in the work week. If anything, sufficiently advanced technology makes the actual human worker irrelevant (i.e. robots). So, we are either working harder than ever or we are getting laid off; there's no middle ground.

These new inventions designed to give us more free time cause a lot of unintended consequences. Microwave ovens became a necessity over time because the existence of the technology changed our expectations about how long it should take to cook something (or at least it changed the expectations of our supervisors at work). Thanks to microwaves, a 30-minute lunch break is considered adequate for getting a hot meal if you're a wage-slave. Management still gets a full hour, but that's because restaurants take longer than microwaves. Likewise, now that doing stuff like laundry is "easy," it's become "just laundry." As in, "Gee honey, I just asked you to do the laundry and dishes before going shopping, is that such a big deal?"

I think these things need to be looked at from a greater distance. No, dishwashers probably didn't really take the load off of women, but in the long run, the fact that housework becomes easier means its easier for men to start to "chip in", and eventually become equal partners. Call it a "foot in the door". It's much easier for a women, coming for a position of weakness in the family due to prevalent social conventions, to ask her spouse to place the dishes into the dishwasher than it would've been for her to ask him to *do* the dishes. From here the road to having the dishes as the husband's (or the children, too) responsibility is short. Once it becomes common for men to share in some parts of the daily chores, this, along with other changes in society, certainly helps in making men's role in the household larger and larger, until we share it equally with women.
I am not suggesting a deterministic process, but I am suggesting that technological change can be taken in that direction, and has been, in some segments of the population.

@Dubi

"the fact that housework becomes easier means its easier for men to start to “chip in”, and eventually become equal partners."

you're missing the point here. the amount of time/degree of difficulty of domestic chores is *not* the reason why cleaning has traditionally been regarded as "women's work." it's the social attitudes and expectations of our patriarchy.

and, washing dishes by hand vs. using a a dishwasher doesn't determine how equal things are, either.

for example, my mother has a dishwasher, and I have never once seen my dad help out. I, on the other hand, do not have one, yet my boyfriend *always* cleans the pots and plates if I've cooked, or if we've cooked together, we split the clean-up.

technology isn't going to reduce sexism, just like it's not going to reduce racism, homophobia, etc. correlation does not equal causation here.

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but then I realized that I should probably chip in to back Maggie up. Dubi, you're really wrong on this one.

Thirty years on, many more major "time saving" advancements in technology, and women's entry into the work force has not seriously reduced the share of the house work that women do in many if not most families (sorry I don't have the most recent statistic on hand). In families where this has changed, it hasn't happened by accident.

Juliet Schor has a really interesting analysis of the more technology=more cleaning phenomenon in her book "The Overworked American." When women were washing by hand using well water, clothes washing was a monthly, or even seasonal, activity. Now, with clothes washing, many women feel pressure to do at least a load of laundry every night. Same thing happens with cooking, dusting, vacuuming (my mom remembers taking their rugs out for a beating once a year), etc, etc, etc.

Or rather as the chores required less work overall, it gave men the freedom to opt out altogether.
Most housework used to be long involved serious labor that required the whole family to pitch in for any of it to get done at all. As machinery and plumbing came along housework became easy enough for one person to manage it on her own. So men no longer needed to help. All a husband needed to do now is just by a machine.

sigh... did I describe technological determinism? No. I did not. I stated so quite explicitly. But somewhere in the generation between my parents and myself (we share dishwashing too, and like you, don't have a dishwasher - cooking is still primarily my wife's job, because my cooking sucks) something has changed. I believe technology had a part in it. It certainly wasn't the cause, but it was a catalyst for other processes already occurring.

Still, I can't prove my claim, and I don't care enough about it to put any effort into it. So have it your way.

No, dishwashers probably didn’t really take the load off of women, but in the long run, the fact that housework becomes easier means its easier for men to start to “chip in”, and eventually become equal partners. Call it a “foot in the door”. Cause we all know that washing the dishes is the hardest of the house work chores. Just a slippery slope from there.

Oops, try that again.

"No, dishwashers probably didn’t really take the load off of women, but in the long run, the fact that housework becomes easier means its easier for men to start to “chip in”, and eventually become equal partners. Call it a “foot in the door”.

Cause we all know that washing the dishes is the hardest of the house work chores. Just a slippery slope from there.

No, it's actually one of the easiest, least time consuming ones (from my own experience, at least). That's how slippery slopes begin - you start with something small.

I'm taking a history class right now and it talked about how when certain supposedly time-saving and more efficient house hold appliances were invented they were, like this ad, marketed to women as if it saved her time and made her life easier.

The primary example was the invention of the stove, which, as I was saying was marketed to women as if it saved them time. In reality, it saved MEN time because they no longer had to spend their spare time chopping wood, etc. and doing the heavier parts of domestic chores that the appliances made obsolete.

Ultimately, Women spent the same amount of time if not more time on domestic chores while men got more free time.

Now that more Women have jobs, one would naively think that society would see the household chores are more unisex. I grew up in a somewhat more unusual household in that while my mom made a lot more money than my dad (and eventually later became a CEO), did every household chore for me and my brother (well we helped but my bio-father did nothing even though he lived there). My dad did have a job but it was very blue collar and low paying, which is fine, a man shouldn't have to be rich, but he completely neglected his parental and domestic duties. My mom had to sleep on the living room floor because he was so messy and she couldn't keep up with it any longer, WHILE MAKING TONS MORE MONEY NONETHELESS!!! All the meanwhile, society is telling me how men provide for women!! So, if you're curious what my dad did in his spare time, he played drums for a crappy cover band, went out secretly at night to who knows where and smoked pot. My mom never knew about the pot because she didn't like to go into what used to be their bedroom.

WOWOWOOW.