The Grand Domestic Revolution ─ A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities

Long before Betty Friedan wrote about "the problem that had no name" in The FeminineMystique, a group of American feminists whose leaders included Melusina Fay Peirce, Mary Livermore,and Charlotte Perkins Gilman campaigned against women's isolation in the home and confinement todomestic life as the basic cause of their unequal position in society.The Grand Domestic Revolutionreveals the innovative plans and visionary strategies of these persistent women, who developed thetheory and practice of what Hayden calls "material feminism" in pursuit of economic independence andsocial equality. The material feminists' ambitious goals of socialized housework and child caremeant revolutionizing the American home and creating community services. They raised fundamentalquestions about the relationship of men, women, and children in industrial society. Hayden analyzesthe utopian and pragmatic sources of the feminists' programs for domestic reorganization and theconflicts over class, race, and gender they encountered.This history of a little-known intellectualtradition challenging patriarchal notions of "women's place" and "women's work" offers a newinterpretation of the history of American feminism and a new interpretation of the history ofAmerican housing and urban design. Hayden shows how the material feminists' political ideology ledthem to design physical space to create housewives' cooperatives, kitchenless houses, day-carecenters, public kitchens, and community dining halls. In their insistence that women be paid fordomestic labor, the material feminists won the support of many suffragists and of novelists such asEdward Bellamy and William Dean Howells, who helped popularize their cause. Ebenezer Howard, RudolphSchindler, and Lewis Mumford were among the many progressive architects and planners who promotedthe reorganization of housing and neighborhoods around the needs of employed women.In reevaluatingthese early feminist plans for the environmental and economic transformation of American society andin recording the vigorous and many-sided arguments that evolved around the issues they raised,Hayden brings to light basic economic and spacial contradictions which outdated forms of housing andinadequate community services still create for American women and for their families.