With all that has been happening in the past decade or so regarding women, their rights, and progress, one regularly points out laws and political reform. Not that they don’t matter, but people often forget another far less glamorous yet potent force that has “quietly” reshaped women’s lives for the better—capitalism and a free society.
In a previous article, I explained how the washing machine, the creation of the birth control pill, and the rise of the service economy gave women the agency to better their lives. Here, I will continue in the same spirit, with a few other inventions that we don’t instinctively connect with women’s liberation.
To understand the story of the bicycle, we need to travel back to the late 19th century—a time when people’s mobility was restricted not by laws but by technology and wealth, or rather, by the lack of both. Travel required a horse, and a horse was neither cheap nor easy to maintain. For women, the barriers were even higher: social norms and safety in some cultures required a chaperone, making any trip more complicated and costly. The bicycle changed that, and in the words of the pioneering women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, this simple machine “has done more to emancipate women than any other thing in the world.”
Yet the bicycle didn’t just transform transportation—it quietly reshaped fashion, culture, and expectations. Riding required more comfortable clothing than the restrictive outfits women wore daily. Soon, women were seen pedaling through town in more practical dresses—scandalous, apparently—alarming the conservative voices of the time.
Ironically, although some critics opposed women bicycling altogether, the loudest objections focused on the “immodest bicycling” that was said to lead to moral degradation—a shorthand for practical clothing that challenged Victorian norms.
Even today, housework takes time. Now imagine trying to do it without the household appliances of today within reach. Endless hours of repetitive domestic labor. No breaks, no shortcuts. Congratulations! You have become every woman of history—until quite recently, that is. So, what was the major historical “un-freedom” for women, you ask? Time, the lack thereof, that is. And then, the market stepped in. I’ve talked about the washing machine, but the refrigerator was not too shabby a liberating invention itself. On the surface, when we think of the refrigerators we have in our houses, we never think of the daily trips that would be necessary without one. Moreover, we don’t put ourselves in the shoes of the people—usually women—who went to the local market to buy food on a daily basis.
Although it took more than seven decades after Carl von Linde invented mechanical refrigeration in 1873 for industrial beer production, women rejoiced in the 1950s when refrigerators became a household staple. What began as a costly, specialized technology was gradually refined, scaled, and made affordable for everyday use.
And although the government-funded invention of the radar played a role in the invention of the microwave, it was purely by chance that it was discovered that exposure to microwave energy melted chocolate bars. The microwave oven, the one we use to this day, might have never been invented if Raytheon had not been allowed to patent it.
To finish this segment off, let’s go to the washing machine. As the old adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and so it was for Josephine Garis Cochrane. Furious that her servants often chipped her plates, she came up with a solution in 1885—the dishwasher. As per usual, we owe our gratitude to Josephine not due to her benevolence but to her regard to her own self-interest. And again, markets and capitalism delivered, both to restaurants and women across society.
That is why I say technology and markets not only helped women, but also freed them. Freedom granted not by state mandates but by private companies fighting for profit. And what kind of freedom am I talking about when it comes to household appliances? Time.
Markets do not need to declare a social mission to reshape society. All they need to do is find and reward solutions to already existing problems. A bicycle, a refrigerator, or a dishwasher, did exactly that. Not ideological in their nature, these innovations delivered what women historically lacked: time, safety, and control over their daily lives. By making life easier, they expanded women’s freedom. Freedom is measured in lived experience rather than catchy slogans or laws. Thus, the great women liberator is the silent technological progress enabled by the free society—a cumulative liberation more potent than any manifesto.
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