This highlights the importance of using data when arguing, even in seemingly &quot;soft&quot; social sciences.<p>On every day of the 20th century, a definite number of people washed clothes, and the gender of each person was (for the most part) definitely determinable. Likewise for people doing work for a paycheck.<p>Now, it might be difficult (or impossible) to get that exact data. So you&#x27;ll have to make do with what you can get. But this is what occupies quite a lot of the time of professional historians and social scientists: getting the best data they can. In some cases it might mean personally combing through the paper archives in dozens of museums, corporate archives, or libraries. Or following chains of relationships, like a detective, to find the one retiree who might have held on to some of those records that everyone thought got tossed out 40 years ago.<p>I offer this not to imply that you, as an undergrad, should do all these things. My point is to illustrate the hard work and tenacity that&#x27;s necessary to actually know things.<p>Quite often here on HN (in fact, even in this thread), I see sentiments to the effect of &quot;well anyone can just make up what they want&quot; when it comes to these sorts of gender&#x2F;society issues. While it&#x27;s true that anyone can hold an opinion, it&#x27;s also true that there are often ways to better inform our own opinions.