 a housewife is a woman whose main occupation is running or managing her family's homeâcaring for and educating her children, cooking and storing food, buying goods the family needs in day-to-day life, cleaning and maintaining the home, making clothes for the family, etc.âand who is generally not employed outside the home.macmillan dictionary definitionj merriam webster describes a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household. the related term homemaker has almost the same meaning but is not limited to women and does not connote marriage. the term housewife may sometimes be used in contrast to a career woman. ==economics== thumb|good housekeeping (an american magazine), 1908  some feminists, and non-feminist economists (particularly proponents of historical materialism) note that the value of housewives' work is ignored in standard formulations of economic output, such as gdp or employment figures. housewives work many unrecorded hours a week, while depending for money on their husband's or partner's employment. ==sociology== ===traditional societies=== for many thousands of years, men have generally been thought of as the main "breadwinners" in families: it was mainly their job to hunt animals for food, grow food crops or earn money, while the women have cared for children, prepared food for eating, cleaned the house, and made and cared for clothes. in societies of hunters and gatherers like the traditional society of the australian aboriginal people, the men hunt animals for meat, and the women gather other foods such as grain, fruit and vegetables. one of the reasons for this division of labor was that it is much easier to look after a baby while gathering fruit than while hunting a fast-moving animal. even when homes were very simple and there were few possessions, men and women did different jobs. in rural societies, where the main work is [[far
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