Labor-Saving Durables, Women’s Labor-Force Participation, and Government Macroeconomic Policy: The Case of Postwar Britain

Abstract The postwar era witnessed substantial changes in women’s formal workforce participation and economic status, driven by equal pay legislation and labor-saving durables that removed most of the fatigue from household tasks. To explore the importance of the postwar “industrialization of the home,” we focus on the UK, where successive governments both restricted the diffusion of labor-saving durables and blocked equal pay legislation, as part of deflationary strategy. We explore the negative impacts of these policies and show that when the restrictions were relaxed in the 1970s, consumer durables ownership and married women’s contributions to household incomes rose substantially.