Creating "Chicks Who Fix": Women, Tool Knowledge, and Home Repair, 1920–2007

Abstract

S. 38: After World War I, home economics professionals promoted manual ability as essential for modern wives - World War II offered temporary justification for women taking on typically male tasks (S.43). - Post-World War II cultural reassertions of traditional gender roles remasculinized home repair - 1970s second-wave feminism provided a new framework connecting tool skills to independence and equality - after 1990, big corporations and women entrepreneurs capitalized on rising rates of female-headed households and home ownership as marketing opportunities. "Home renovations shows made repairwomen celebrities; they combined solid technical information with emotional appeal to sell other women on tool use as a vehicle for material pleasure, self-expression, and personalized empowerment." S. 47 Female homeowners' post-1990 empowerment in America: A flood of 1990s books took a radically different angle, promoting technical knowledge to women as homeowners themselves, eager to raise the worth of their investment; this philosophy was no accident; in the 1990s, the United States' fastest real estate growth came from female buyers S. 56 "Yet the compelling cultural dialogue around women's repair work shows tools as a site for negotiated performance of gender roles."