page_title: Housewife
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Housewife / History
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: Hemmens forskningsinstitut. En kvinna arbetar i köket, en annan kvinna antecknar och klockar tiden (Rålambsvägen 8 och 10 i Stockholm)
context_page_description: A housewife is a woman whose work is running or managing her family's home—caring for her children; buying, cooking, and storing food for the family; buying goods that the family needs for everyday life; housekeeping, cleaning and maintaining the home; and making, buying and/or mending clothes for the family—and who is not employed outside the home. A housewife who has children may be called a stay-at-home mother or mom.
  Webster's Dictionary defines a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household. The British Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary defines a housewife as "the mistress of a household; a female domestic manager; a pocket sewing kit".
context_section_description: Although men have generally been thought of as the primary or sole breadwinners for families in recent history, the division of labor between men and women in traditional societies required both genders to take an active role in obtaining resources outside the domestic sphere. Prior to agriculture and animal husbandry, reliable food sources were a scarce commodity. To achieve optimal nutrition during this time, it was imperative that both men and women focus their energies on hunting and gathering as many different edible foods as possible to sustain themselves on a daily basis. Lacking the technologies necessary to store and preserve food, it was critical for men and women to seek out and obtain fresh food sources almost continuously. These nomadic tribes used gender differences to their advantage, allowing men and women to use their complementary adaptations and survival strategies to find the most diverse and nutritionally complete foods available. For example, in the context of daily foraging, childcare itself was not a hindrance to women's productivity; rather, performing this task with her children both increased the overall efficiency of the activity (more people participating equals a greater yield of edible roots, berries, nuts, and plants), and functioned as an important hands-on lesson in survival skills for each child. By sharing the burden of daily sustenance – and developing specialized gender niches – humans not only ensured their continued survival, but also paved the way for later technologies to evolve and grow through experience.
  In the 19th century, more and more women in industrialising countries stopped being homemakers and farm wives and began to undertake paid work in various industries outside the home and away from the family farm, in addition to the work they did at home. At this time many big factories were set up, first in England, then in other European countries and the United States. Many thousands of young women went to work in factories; most factories employed women in roles different from those occupied by men. There were also women who worked at home for low wages while caring for their children at the same time.
  Being a housewife was only realistic among middle-class and upper-class families.  In working-class families, it was typical for women to work.  In the 19th century, a third to half of married women in England were recorded in the census as working for outside pay, and some historians believe this to be an undercount.  Among married couples that could afford it, the wife often managed the housework, gardening, cooking, and children without working outside the home.  Women were often very proud to be a good homemaker and have their house and children respectably taken care of.  Other women, like Florence Nightingale, pursued non-factory professions even though they were wealthy enough that they did not need the income. Some professions open to women were also restricted to unmarried women (e.g., teaching).
  
  In the early 20th century, both world wars (World War I, 1914–18; and World War II, 1939-45) were fought by the men of many different countries. (There were also special roles in the armed forces carried out by women, e.g. nursing, transport, etc. and in some countries women soldiers also.) While the men were at war, many of their womenfolk went to work outside the home to keep the countries running. Women, who were also homemakers, worked in factories, businesses and farms. At the end of both wars, many men had died, and others returned injured. Some men were able to return to their previous positions, but some women stayed in the workforce as well. In addition to this surge in women entering the workforce, convenience food and domestic technology were also rising in popularity, both of which saved women time that they may have spent performing domestic tasks, and enabled them to instead pursue other interests.
  The governments of communist countries in the early and middle 20th century, such as the Soviet Union and China, encouraged married women to keep working after givi
caption: A woman cooks, supervised by a teacher, in a domestic economy institute in Stockholm, Sweden. (1950)
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