For most of American history, women were expected to manage domestic life rather than engage in commerce and business.

The professional networks through which inventions were commercialized were heavily male-dominated.

Investors were almost entirely male, and their investment decisions reflected assumptions about who was and was not a credible business partner.

Manufacturing companies were run by men.

The patent attorneys who drafted and prosecuted patent applications were, at least through most of the twentieth century, almost entirely male.

A woman inventor who brought an invention to a manufacturing company in, say, the 1950s, was entering a world that had not been designed for her participation and that often actively resisted it.

The assumption that women’s inventions were properly in the domestic sphere — useful within the home but not worthy of serious commercial development — shaped how women inventors and their work were received.