Gendered Invisibility, Respectable Cleanliness: The Impact of the Washing Machine on Daily Living in Post-1950 Santiago, Chile

This article examines how domestic technology, in particular the washing machine, radically altered daily patterns of living in twentieth-century Santiago, Chile. While scholars of American and European history have analyzed the impact of domestic technology, Latin Americanists have not. This article links the gendered nature of citizenship, twentieth-century modernization drives, and the importance of consumption in economic development with how Chileans used and understood domestic technology in their daily lives. The impact of the washing machine is unrecognized and invisible in the minds of most Chileans despite the fact that the purchase of a washing machine released women from the backbreaking burden of hand washing, alternately reduced and enhanced class distinctions, and altered daily interactions between husbands, wives, and maids. Furthermore, these changes indicate how links between cleanliness and gender, and respectability and class underscore Chilean concepts of modernity and progress.