"Femininity" in any culture is defined in part by the kind of work women do (or are supposed to do). Housework is not just a practical necessity; it has also been seen as an assertion of women's identity as women, wives, and mothers.

Class distinctions intersect with gender roles in defining how Americans have looked at housework. Working outside the home, having servants, or doing manual work have all been considered class markers, and all of these have been affected by the availability of new household appliances. Improvements in household technologies have also resulted in a convergence between the activities of lower- and upper-class housewives.

One question we ask as historians is, How could things have happened otherwise? We should not assume that the tools we have today are the only ones that were possible or desirable. Studying alternative technologies and understanding why they did not succeed shows that a wide range of factors (often social rather than technical) can affect the success of an innovation.

Changing (rising or falling) standards for technology mean that improved technology does not necessarily mean less work for the people using it. More broadly, each change in technology involves a choice between options such as low cost, safety, ease of operation, style, etc. Our task is to try to explain which choices were made and why.

Technologies can be seen as having "inertia" or "momentum" in the sense that once they are put in place, they are hard to change. Replacing an established technology may mean changing or discarding manufacturing facilities, distribution channels, people's skills, and physical environments. Thus, technology that are set up under one set of assumptions (such as that all women should be full-time homemakers) tend to persist even when the assumptions are no longer valid.