Opportunity Costs...

Wow. My Economics text book summed up the following:
"The point is that in pre-applicance days, the opportunity cost of working outside the home was very high: it was something that women typically did only in the face of dire financial necessity. With modern appliances, the opportunities available to women changed-and the rest is history."

You know..because..the husbands didn't help with the laundry, cooking, rearing of the children, cleaning of the house, grocery shopping, or perhaps the starch ironing of their perfect white shirts for work. Because it wasn't expected of them to, and it's because women were the ones that were expected to do it all. Their "alternative" was out of reach by the weight of their opportunity cost that society imposed by the double standard of expectations by gender.

Nor was there a whole revolution to allow women to go out and vote, and have a choice of where to work --> evolving from only having the opportunity to be a secretary, which was a wife-in-office to fetch coffee, answer your phones, and type letters. It was as it was, this is not a put down on secretaries nor those who aspired to be (believe me, I've been there).

Thank you world for evolving. Or I guess, according to the econ book, for the invention of appliances. pff.