I’ve been toying with posting about Lillian Moller Gilbreth for the last few weeks when the post about Grace Murray Hopper inspired me. Lillian Gilbreth was an Industrial Engineer and Psychologist most remembered for bearing twelve children at her husband’s request and being the brains behind their engineering and consulting firm.

I intended to only credit Lillian Gilbreth with the invention of the foot pedal garbage can, incredibly useful in medical as well as domestic settings. But it seems she also invented the wall light switch, shelves and storage on the inside of refrigerator doors and observed and refined the “work triangle” in the kitchen and the linear kitchen design. Kitchen designs are still influenced by her observations and ideas. She HATED housework and her sideline in domestic engineering was intended to free women to pursue something besides drudgery. Truly we’ve all probably had interaction with her ideas and innovations today if we did so much as open the refrigerator. How is she not better remembered?

The Wikipedia article blandly states that all or most of her husband’s authored papers were co-written by her but she often had to forego even a second author credit because of prejudice against women. After her husband’s premature death several big clients dropped her because they were convinced that her bricklayer husband was the brains of the operation. I shouldn’t paint the man as a dolt, he did partial apprenticeships in many of the building trades and had a contracting company when he married Lillian but the serious industrial engineering started after they were married. The first writing on time management was hers in 1908. But everyone to this day writes of her as the subordinate partner. The helpmeet, even though she had a BS in Engineering and a Ph.D in Psychology and was probably one of the founders of Industrial Psychology as we know it.

What is she remembered for? Having 13 children. She’s the mother of Cheaper by the Dozen fame. While she was doing all of this! The woman must have had not only stellar brains but enormous energy. She hated housework and sought to make it easier for all of us. My title isn’t hyperbole, every one of us has interacted with the products of her hard work and skill today. And soon she will be forgotten even as a breeder within the institution of patriarchal marriage.

This is how women’s achievements are suppressed. Take a minute today when you flip a light switch or use the garbage can foot pedal or open the refrigerator or work in the kitchen to remember this remarkable woman.