The maddening story of why microwaves were first marketed only to men
Welcome to the world of gadgets for guys, also known as ‘brown goods’
Change the channel, turn up the volume, press record…and cook dinner? That’s how it used to be, it turns out. When microwaves first appeared in stores, they actually lined the shelves alongside TVs, radios, hi-fi equipment, and video recorders—all devices marketed nearly exclusively to men.
These “brown goods” — named for their wood, bakelite, and, later, black plastic materials — were their own consumer category, according to Cynthia Cockburn’s and Susan Ormrod’s 1993 study, Gender and Technology in the Making. But brown goods weren’t just packaged in darker tones for the sake of practicality: manufacturers considered these items would appeal to men only, and thus outfitted them in traditionally masculine colors. Products related to consumer entertainment fit that bill, but more and more, brown goods grew to encompass gadgets en masse. Anything leisurely, novel, or some combination of the two — like a Segway or the Clapper — belonged in the men’s aisle. Counterintuitively, it seems no one behind the microwave oven ever considered the product might interest women, despite it being a cooking tool.
“Cockburn and Ormrod describe how early designs imagined the microwave as a ‘brown good,’ a high-tech device that would appeal to single men who were without wives to cook for them at home and did not themselves possess the natural inclination or time to spend in the kitchen,” according to Anastasia Powell and Nicola Henry’s Sexual Violence in a Digital Age (2017).
The British and American militaries first developed microwave technology in tandem with radar during World War II, and in 1947, U.S. defense contractor Raytheon built the first commercial microwave oven—targeting primarily single men. It didn’t help that the engineers, designers, and advertisers that pushed the item onto shelves were mostly male. They saw the microwave more as a luxury hobby purchase, like something out of a Sharper Image catalog today. In one retail location, the device was actually called a “Piewarmer.” (Presumably, for all the pies these guys were baking?)
This isn’t to say advancements in household technology ignored female consumers. Quite the contrary. Washing machines, ovens, and refrigerators went after women’s pocketbooks, as well as the prevailing cultural dogma that their gender belonged in the home. In fact, products understood to be part of women’s realm had their own categorization: “white goods.” And, you guessed it, most of these early appliances were coated in white enamel. But color was only a loose relationship. The real distinctions between brown goods and white goods were function, location in the house, and end user.
White goods represented domestic work first and foremost. The products were often large, with an air of immobility and permanence. They were decidedly low-tech, at least compared with cutting-edge electronics and microwave ovens, but were nonetheless marketed as status purchases, emblems of a perfectly functioning home and indicative of a prosperous family. The share of households owning a refrigerator between 1940 and 1950, for example, jumped from 44 percent to 80 percent. Billions of dollars were poured into the American home appliance market alone.
Meanwhile, microwaves were gathering dust next to television sets on showroom floors. Men just didn’t want them. So, marketers threw a Hail Mary and bet on women. They swapped out colors and sold microwaves as kitchen built-ins rather than standalone gadgets. They included recipe books targeted at female cooks. In some cases, shopkeepers physically moved microwaves from one side of the store to the other, and stacked them next to washer/dryer sets and stoves. It worked. Sales skyrocketed among women. No manufacturer had foreseen women’s need or desire to save time or (heaven forbid) get creative with cooking.
What followed was a profound shift in food preparation and packaging. The TV dinner was no longer an underselling, niche bachelor indulgence. It was a veritable status symbol for the new leisure class, driven by female buying power. Recipe books were soon bursting with colorful, bizarre, and sometimes revolting recipes. As entertaining became less of a headache, people turned house parties into a cultural institution.
Marketers, however, continued to employ the terms “brown goods” and “white goods.” And in many cases, they never learned the microwave lesson. Take the Game Boy, which was initially manufactured in grey and literally gendered. When Nintendo learned that thousands of young female gamers were playing Super Mario Land, they adjusted…by introducing a pink device. The old brown-and-white approach again.
The newest and most innovative technologies don’t have every customer pigeonholed and every use case predetermined. That’s what makes these products so compelling. In many ways it’s the user who defines the limits of technology, not the creator. Which is one reason it cuts so deep that women are so often overlooked as the drivers of progress. Women and girls are not mere saps for the next clever marketing campaign; more often, they are realizing unforeseen potentials. And until more women can be part of the building process, and not just consumption, tech will always be playing catch up.
