Women shaping shelter: Technology, consumption, and the twentieth-century house

"Women Shaping Shelter: Technology, Consumption, and the Twentieth-Century House" explores the complex relationship between women and the material world in which we live. This study takes into consideration how differences in economic class, race, and region determined the extent to which women were able to influence the physical spaces around them. Buildings are one of the largest physical manifestations of our culture. To document how women shaped the built environment is to begin to understand the ways women have influenced American culture in its most visible form.; The focus of this study is on residential architecture. The twentieth century was an age of great technological, social, and economic changes, including the growth of urban and suburban populations, the development of a large middle class, and the recognition of civil and human rights for women and minorities. Concomitant with society's transformation, women gained more influence within the home and within society at large. Indeed, women increased their role in the design and function of houses even as the professions of construction and architecture remained dominated by men, with only limited changes in that domination in the late-twentieth century. Women increased their power as professionals, clients, consumers, and technologists; a pattern that is reflected in the house itself: the opening up of the kitchen to the public, the electrification of the house, the attention given to the laundry room and its placement on the main floor, and the installation of household technologies. Furthermore, women themselves gained more footholds in building and design professions.; Scholars such as Leslie Weisman, Angel Kwolek-Folland, and Daphne Spain have demonstrated how architectural design created gendered environments reinforcing traditional beliefs about the appropriate roles for men and women in society. Others have looked at how women have functioned in man-made environments. This dissertation examines how women created domestic environments as professionals, owners, occupants, and workers, and consequently made a significant contribution in the modernization of the twentieth-century house.