About this ebook
“This work won the 1984 Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology. It is a history of housework and household technology from the 17th century to the present. Ruth Schwartz Cowan contends that households were not industrialized the way other workplaces were in the 19th century and that women’s work was industrialized incompletely or differently from men’s. Despite technological advances, housework thus remains a full-time task. Critics praised the book’s clarity and insights.” — The New York Times
“More Work for Mother is a major contribution to the social history of technology and a book that attempts feats few scholars undertake... it is lucid, engaging, and provocative... On balance, More Work for Mother is a remarkable book. It makes some important aspects of the history of technology accessible to a popular audience; provides a stimulating, scholarly overview of domestic technology for courses in the history of women, labor, or technology; and seems destined to set the next decade’s research agenda for scholarship on housework and household technology.” — Isis
“[A] perceptive contribution to the social history of technology.” — The Business History Review
“More Work for Mother is an engaging and thought-provoking general history of household technology in America from colonial times to the present... All students of the subject will greatly benefit by the framework [Cowan] has constructed and the stimulating ideas she has put forward.” — Journal of Social History
“The strength of Cowan’s work is her consistent ability to demonstrate how tools have shaped human behavior... Cowan’s book is knowledgeable, deft, and stimulating.” — The American Historical Review
“Ruth Cowan’s knowledgeable, witty, and concise survey of three hundred years of household work — and her original interpretation of the industrialization of the household — will open the eyes and provoke the thoughts of historians and general readers alike.” — Nancy Cott, Yale University
“It is written with eloquence and fluency revealing a subtlety of mind and an eye for the neglected obvious which I much admire.” — Daniel J. Boorstin, The Librarian of Congress
“So interesting and so well written that you scarcely realize how much you are learning.” — Jessie Bernard, author, The Female World
About the author
Born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, Ruth Schwartz Cowan attended the public schools there, graduating from Midwood High School. Subsequently, she earned a BA in zoology from Barnard College, an MA in history from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD in the history of science from Johns Hopkins University.
Specializing in the history of science, technology and medicine, Cowan taught in the history department at SUNY Stony Brook from 1967 to 2002, becoming a Professor in 1984; she also served as Director of Women’s Studies (1985-1990) and Chair of the Honors College (1997-2002). In 2002 she became Janice and Julian Bers Professor of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also served as department chair from 2003-2008, and 2011-2012. Since 2012 she has been Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania.
Cowan’s books include More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, which won the Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology in 1984, Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening and A Social History of American Technology. Cowan has been awarded the Leonardo daVinci Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for the History of Technology in 1997 and the John Desmond Bernal Prize for her contributions to the field of Science and Technology Studies in 2008. Cowan was President of the Society for the History of Technology (1992-1994) and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014.
