The idea that equipping homes with electrical appliances and other "modern" household technologies would eliminate drudgery, save labor time, and increase leisure for women who were full-time home workers remained largely unchallenged until the women's movement of the 1970's spawned the groundbreaking and influential works of sociologist Joann Vanek and historian Ruth Cowan. Vanek analyzed 40 years of timeuse surveys conducted by home economists to argue that electrical appliances and other modern household technologies reduced the effort required to perform specific tasks, but ownership of these appliances did not correlate with less time spent on housework by full-time home workers. In fact, time spent by these workers remained remarkably constant―at about 52 to 54 hours per week―from the 1920's to the 1960's, a period of significant change in household technology. In surveying two centuries of household technology in the United States, Cowan argued that the "industrialization" of the home often resulted in more work for full-time home workers because the use of such devices as coal stoves, water pumps, and vacuum cleaners tended to reduce the workload of married-women's helpers (husbands, sons, daughters, and servants) while promoting a more rigorous standard of housework. The full-time home worker's duties also shifted to include more household management, child care, and the post-Second World War phenomenon of being "Mom's taxi."

    In Winters v. United States (1908), the Supreme Court held that the right to use waters flowing through or adjacent to the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation was reserved to American Indians by the treaty establishing the reservation. Although this treaty did not mention water rights, the Court ruled that the federal government, when it created thereservation, intended to deal fairly with American Indians by preserving for them the waters without which their lands would have been useless. Later decisions, citing Winters, established that courts can find federal rights to reserve water for particular purposes if (1) the land in question lies within an enclave under exclusive federal jurisdiction, (2) the land has been formally withdrawn from federal public lands — i.e., withdrawn from the stock of federal lands available for private use under federal land use laws — and set aside or reserved, and (3) the circumstances reveal the government intended to reserve water as well as land when establishing the reservation.

    Some American Indian tribes have also established water rights through the courts based on their traditional diversion and use of certain waters prior to the United States' acquisition of sovereignty. For example, the Rio Grande pueblos already existed when the United States acquired sovereignty over New Mexico in 1848. Although they at that time became part of the United States, the pueblo lands never formally constituted a part of federal public lands; in any event, no treaty, statute, or executive order has ever designated or withdrawn the pueblos from public lands as American Indian reservations. This fact, however, has not barred application of the Winters doctrine. What constitutes an American Indian reservation is a question of practice, not of legal definition, and the pueblos have always been treated as reservations by the United States. This pragmatic approach is buttressed by Arizona v. California (1963), wherein the Supreme Court indicated that the manner in which any type of federal reservation is created does not affect the application to it of the Winters doctrine. Therefore, the reserved water rights of Pueblo Indians have priority over other citizens' water rights as of 1848, the year in which pueblos must be considered to have become reservations.