"Housework Made Easy": The Taylorized Housewife in Weimar Germany's Rationalized Economy

Nolan, Mary

doi:10.2307/3178019

Cited by 45 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…34 This drive for domestic modernisation found support from a range of diverse parties and agendas: to feminists, it was seen as means of relief from drudgery and a recognition of domestic labour; for industrialists, she explains, it was seen as a means to make the workforce more productive, and for unions seen as part of a modern, progressive future. 35 Yet as historians Susan Henderson and Mary Nolan separately note, the act of modernising the home did not liberate women's time, with the benefits going "first and foremost to others-husbands, children, industry and the national economy, the political party and the state." 36 Henderson argued that ideas around domesticity in the Weimar republic at that time were a significant aspect of the retrenchment of feminism (and part of being a good German housewife).…”

Section: Critiques Of Domestic Automationmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Domestic Fantasies and Anti-work Politics: A Feminist History of Complicating Automation

Graziano¹,

Trogal²

2021

College Literature

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In this article we place the discussions of automation in post-work imaginaries within and alongside feminist critiques and understandings of domestic technology. Structured in three parts, the first surveys debates on the future of work, showing how feminist materialist critiques of technology would lend itself to an anti-work rather than post-work politics. The second focuses on both historical and contemporary feminist critiques of domestic automation to situate the post-work condition in this longer lineage. In the final section, we sketch the contours of a distinctly feminist anti-work imaginary drawing on Dolores Hayden's work on collective domestic settlements and Rachel Maine's work on amateur uses and repurposing of obsolete technologies in the name of a politics of pleasure.

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Section: Critiques Of Domestic Automationmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Domestic Fantasies and Anti-work Politics: A Feminist History of Complicating Automation

Graziano¹,

Trogal²

2021

College Literature

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“…64 If the Reichsbank and the Beratungsstelle generally viewed improvements to human capital as a peripheral standard for determining productivity, many industrialists actually agreed with municipal officials that the development of human capital was vital for recovery. 65 Ernst Poensgen, an executive of the giant Vestag steel conglomerate, cooperated with Diisseldorf s administration in organizing the Gesolei, a 1926 exhibition that presented health care, social welfare, and physical exercise as methods for cultivating vigor and efficiency. Poensgen favored a balance between work and leisure in order to "preserve and raise the ability to work (Arbeitsfdhigkeit).…”

Section: Productivity and Human Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Luxury or Public Investment? Productivity and Planning for Weimar Recovery

Lieberman

1993

Cent Eur Hist

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The late Detlev Peukert noted that historians of the Weimar Republic have tended to devote their attention to the republic's first and last years. They have much to say about the Weimar Republic up to the end of the inflation in 1923 and 1924. However, they tend to jump from Weimar's troubled early years to its catastrophic disintegration between 1929 and 1933. Skirting the middle years, historians have generally overlooked the problem of recovery in Germany during the 1920s. In doing so, they have ignored a topic of central concern to Germans during the twenties.

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“…1948: 51). The proposals of the committee included, for example, better maternity protection, part-time work for those who were willing to take it, the development of employers' social activities, the introduction of a municipal system to assist with life in the home, and research on the rationalization of housework (see also Davis 2012;Nolan 1990;Taylor Allen 2006;Thane and Evans 2012;von Oertzen and Rietzschel 1997). The committee also called for the implementation of the 1936 Child Welfare Act, which obliged municipalities either to establish facilities that would complement the parental input into child development or support such facilities.…”

Section: Women's Work and The Employment Of Married Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Social Risk? Social-Scientific Knowledge and Work-Life Balance in Twentieth-Century Finland

Eräranta¹

2015

Social Science History

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Work-life balance, or the reconciliation of work and family, has been discussed recently as a "new social risk" in comparative research on the welfare state. According to this discussion, the social security systems of traditional welfare states were built after World War II in order to protect (male) breadwinners against the "old social risks" such as the loss of income due to old age, sickness, accident, or unemployment. Scholars have argued, however, that these postwar policies have been inadequate for dealing with the new types of risks that resulted from complex changes in employment practices and family life. This article reflects critically upon the conceptualization of work-life balance as a new social risk by focusing on one of the Nordic countries, which have come to be known for their policies that combine (female) parenthood and paid work. In particular, it analyzes the problematization and governance of work-family reconciliation in twentieth-century Finland. Overall, the article argues that social scientific knowledge played a key role in the ways in which work-life balance was rendered intelligible and manageable as a social policy issue.

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"Housework Made Easy": The Taylorized Housewife in Weimar Germany's Rationalized Economy

Cited by 45 publications

References 0 publications

On Domestic Fantasies and Anti-work Politics: A Feminist History of Complicating Automation

On Domestic Fantasies and Anti-work Politics: A Feminist History of Complicating Automation

Luxury or Public Investment? Productivity and Planning for Weimar Recovery

A New Social Risk? Social-Scientific Knowledge and Work-Life Balance in Twentieth-Century Finland

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