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The Home as Undeveloped Industry
Gilman argues that cooking, cleaning, and other domestic duties are treated as inherently "womanly" only by prejudice, not by any real connection to sex — and that these tasks remain primitive, unspecialized trades precisely because they have never been allowed to develop as professions.
"Womanliness" of home duties as prejudice, not natureDomestic work as an underdeveloped industryThe mixing of "self-interest" with domestic laborWhat professional cooking and commerce already demonstrateImagining specialized, professionalized domestic industries