Women's Labor Force Participation and Household Technology

We examine how women’s employment leads to household technology adoption in the context of mid-century United States. Using World War II factories and male casualty rates to instrument for female labor demand, we find that the rise in women’s labor force participation between 1940 and 1950 increases appliance ownership by 25 percent in the average county. This result holds in both panel and cross-sectional estimates, and for two different technologies. We examine several mechanisms and find that changes to household income, as well as the substitution of hired domestic services with appliances, are salient channels. Together, the evidence is consistent with a historiography that suggests that as women went to work, they adopted appliances with new purchasing power and increasing demands on their time