Which is more important? The economist Ha-Joon Chang picks the washing machine:

Chang: By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society. As women have become active in the labour market they have acquired a different status at home — they can credibly threaten their partners that if they don't treat them well they will leave them and make an independent living. And this had huge economic consequences. Rather than spend their time washing clothes, women could go out and do more productive things. Basically, it has doubled the workforce.

The Gaurdian: The washing machine is just one element here. Other factors have contributed to the liberation of women — feminism, the pill and so on.

Chang: Yes, but feminism couldn't have been implemented unless there was this technological basis for a society where women went out and worked. Of course it's not just the washing machine, it's piped water, electricity, irons and so on.

To understand Chang's thinking, you have to understand that this thinking never breaks or loses contact with the realities of life in poor countries. Most of the world lives in these societies: and the poorer a society is, the more its culture is organized by the traditions of the past. These traditions cannot be changed or dissolved by mere ideas. Feminism is only a dream when compared to the real of a washing machine.