17/12/2025
A mother of 12 who "couldn't cook" revolutionized your kitchen—and companies fired her when her husband died because they refused to believe a woman understood business. In 1924, Lillian Gilbreth's world shattered. Her husband and business partner Frank died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving her with 11 children under age 19 and a consulting business that immediately collapsed. Every single corporate client canceled their contracts. The message was clear: they'd been hiring Frank. A woman—even one with a PhD—couldn't possibly understand efficiency, business, or engineering.
They were catastrophically wrong. Born in 1878 to a wealthy California family, Lillian had defied expectations her entire life.
While most women of her era were denied higher education, she convinced her skeptical father to let her attend UC Berkeley. She graduated with honors and gave the commencement speech—the first woman allowed to do so. She earned a master's degree, then married Frank Gilbreth, a self-taught construction engineer obsessed with efficiency. He convinced her to switch her PhD studies from literature to psychology. The timing was perfect: psychology was brand new, and so was industrial engineering.
Lillian saw the connection no one else did—that understanding human behavior was just as important as understanding machinery. Together, they pioneered "time and motion study," using the new technology of film to analyze how workers performed tasks. While Frank focused on the mechanics, Lillian focused on the people. She studied worker fatigue, motivation, and happiness—radical concepts in an era when laborers were treated like machines. They tested their theories on the ultimate laboratory: their household of 12 children. Everything was an experiment. They timed baths, analyzed dishwashing, and optimized tooth-brushing...To be continued in c0mments 👇
