It&#x27;s incidental (for me) that this article should be posted today. Only two days ago, in a philosophy class on environmental ethics, I was told by the professor that my answer to a discussion prompt on &quot;ecofeminism,&quot; which cited the development of the washing machine as facilitating the women&#x27;s rights movement, would be disagreed with by feminists and that it reflected my worldview that it was women&#x27;s &quot;essential role in life to do laundry.&quot; The counterargument was that World War 2 had been responsible for women entering the workforce and not household electrical appliances. My rebuttal that this may not explain global demographic data from developing countries has thus far gone unanswered.<p>Apologies for the personal anecdote, but needless to say I&#x27;m still a bit offended at having been called a bigot. Particularly when Ana Swanson, a &quot;reporter for Wonkblog specializing in business, economics, data visualization and China&quot; would probably not have been similarly told that by writing this article she believes housework is women&#x27;s essential role in life. It seems some would require extensive quantitative evidence for this claim to avoid stepping on any toes, though, and I wonder if Hans Rosling, Ha-Joon Chang, Max Roser and the others making it have quantified to what extent appliances were an influence compared to other factors.