Dishwashers and the 24/7 Time Constraint

In my own family, the reverence that we have for the dishwasher (and other time-saving devices) is such that we have a cat named “Josephine” after the Josephine Cochrane–the inventor of the first commercially viable dishwasher. (Also named because, as a kitten, she liked to forage in the back of the dishwasher.) Erin Braid provides a brief history of dishwashing from the technologies of sand, husks, and eggshell up to Cochrane and her legacy in “Washer Woman” (Works in Progress, November 13, 2025).

About Cochrane, Braid writes:

Instead, the first commercially successful dishwasher, created and sold by Josephine Garis Cochrane, used jets of pressurized water to clean the dishes. Although Cochrane was not the first to propose using water jets, she was granted seven US patents for various other dishwasher designs and improvements. Her first patent, in 1886, covered the idea of using two separate water systems: one for soapy water, and one for clean hot water to rinse away the soap. A small lever on the outside of the machine controlled whether it was in washing mode or rinsing mode, engaging the appropriate pump and channeling water to return to the appropriate tank to be reused.

Unlike previous dishwasher inventors, Cochrane manufactured her machine at scale and built a company. She established her factory near Chicago, and traveled throughout the Midwest to demonstrate and sell the machines. The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair was a great showcase for her dishwashers: they were on display in the Machinery Hall and in the Women’s Building, and they were in use behind the scenes at the fairground’s restaurants. They were also installed in many of the hotels that Chicago built for World’s Fair visitors. 

I have heard it persuasively argued that technological developments, rather than legalities, have been the main driver of changing gender roles in modern high income countries, including both contraceptive technologies and technologies that affected the time needed for household tasks. As Braid points out:

Alongside other household appliances and cultural shifts, dishwash­ers have allowed Americans, especially American women, to spend significantly less time on housework. In 1965 (when 14 percent of families had dishwashers), the average married American woman did 34 hours of housework per week, while the average married man did 5. For comparison, in 2010 (when 70 percent of families had dishwashers), the average married man did 10 hours of housework per week, and the average married woman did 18. This certainly shows shifting gender dynamics, but it also shows that a typical married couple spends 11 fewer hours per week on housework than they did in 1965. 

Every human faces the fundamental time constraint of 168 hours per week: if one sleeps eight hours per night, that’s 112 hours of waking time per week. Labor-saving technologies that helped to reduce time spent by women on housework by 16 hours per week from 1965 to 2010 is in this sense an extraordinary gain of more than two hours per day.

The post Dishwashers and the 24/7 Time Constraint first appeared on Conversable Economist.