1. What group of women did Cowan study?
2. What impact of technological change did she study?
3. What sources of information did she use to determine the technological changes that had taken place?
4. What technological changes did she study?
5. What did Cowan consider to be the significant change in household labour patterns? Why?
6. What conclusions is Cowan making based on the comparison of hours of housework done by farm and urban families?
7. What is meant by the term “causal link”?
8. What does Cowan state is the causal link between household industrialization and the disappearance of servants?
9. Is there any evidence for such a link?
10. Cowan states that work that was once done by commercial agencies was now done by middle-class housewives. Can you think of any example of commercial or non-commercial agencies taking over household tasks that have traditionally been done by the family?
11. This article was written in 1976. Do you think that middle-class family structure has changed during the past 30 years? How so?
1. In what ways did the 3 houses discussed in the article deal with housework?
2. What types of housework would you like a house to do?
3. How do you think women would design a house differently than men would?
1. What criticisms did the author make about the user-interfaces of word processing programs?
2. How did the designers of various word processors view the users of the software?
3. How did this view affect the way the software was designed?
4. Are the word processing programs you use “gendered”?