In the early 20th century, the emerging field of Home Economics gave educated women an opportunity to become professionals within a respected field of expertise. As new electrical appliances became available in the early 20th century, home economists became responsible for training housewives in their use. Home economists could translate technical knowledge into every day language and show women how to apply it.
I have mixed thoughts about the emergence of home economics as a field. They probably stem from the home economics classes I had to take in middle school. While boys learned woodworking and tried not to hit their fingers with hammers. Girls learned to set a table properly and make white sauce without lumps. I’m sure the classes must have had other topics, but those are the ones I remember. The recipe for white sauce, by the way, first appeared in the 1950 Betty Crocker Cook Book. Milk, flour, butter, seasonings, and lots of stirring. Not surprisingly, learning to stir white sauce didn’t teach me any technical knowledge. But enough about my culinary disasters.
The problem women had in the early 20th century was that, in general, women were considered to be less intelligent than men. Pioneers in the home economics discipline believed that with proper technical skills, women could prove their intelligence and gain respect without crossing male boundaries by, for example, attending chemistry classes.
Home economist Marion Talbot spent most of her career at the University of Chicago where in 1912 she created the Department of Household Administration. The topic of Sanitary Science had previously been a coeducational program housed in the Department of Sociology. But with Talbot’s innovation, the topic was reserved for women only.
“Home economics is the best subject yet found to teach the power of things,” Talbot said. “It is humiliating to be conquered by things.” Talbot and other leaders in home economics believed that as women gained scientific knowledge about food, cleaning, and efficiency, they could make informed decisions for themselves and their families.
Catherine Beecher said much the same thing in 1872:
“The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction & government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.”
But Beecher’s thoughts didn’t found a new academic discipline.
The mantra of the American Home Economic Association established in 1908 was that for women to improve their position, they must follow expert advice from home economists and denounce tradition. And yet, most women continued to perform the same domestic tasks as they did before, albeit with more modern design principles.
Mary Pattison observed in her Principles of Domestic Engineering published in 1915, “our hope is to bring the masculine and feminine mind more closely together in the industry of home-making by raising housework on the one side to the plane of scientific engineering, and by proving on the other, fuller individual returns for every complete and right domestic activity.” And yet, as this 1927 illustration demonstrates, male and female roles remained much the same.
Iowa State College became the first college to offer an undergraduate Bachelor of Science program in the study of household equipment. Between 1930 and 1955, Iowa granted 308 BS degrees. The school followed up with a master’s degree program that taught women how to understand and repair equipment. Both programs proved women could fully understand the new household technology.
Graduates of this and other collegiate programs found positions with utility companies and appliance manufacturers. In 1935, Betty Melcher who worked at Buffalo General Electric, observed “If Mrs. Jones swears she can’t bake a cake and threatens to throw her range out, it is my job to prove to her that she can and incidentally sell her on keeping the range.”
Of course, Betty didn’t need a home economics degree to sell electric ranges. But without it, she had no credentials for the job. In 1949, a woman without a degree in home economics couldn’t possibly know anything about how the new electric ovens worked, or teach middle school girls how to stir a white sauce. And if women and girls didn’t know these things, they would be as ignorant as the greater culture assumed.
It wasn’t until the second wave of feminism that young women had a choice denied to the founders of home economics. In 1960, women were six percent of doctors, three percent of lawyers, and less than one percent of engineers. In 2022, 37 percent of doctors and 15 percent of engineers were women. In 2024, 41 percent of lawyers were women.
Women have broken out of the domestic cage, and have choices Catherine Beecher never imagined. From my perspective, that’s progress. No stirring required.
Illustrations & A Few Sources
Ladies Home Journal, 1948; Home Economics Class at Goshen College, 1948; Vacuum cleaner Advertisement, Saturday Evening Post, 1920; Marion Talbot, 1911; Title Page for Beecher’s The New Housekeeper’s Manual, 1873; Country Gentleman, 1927; Electric Stove, 1949; College of DePage President Dr. Ann Rondeau by COD Newsroom, 2018. Glenna Matthews. “Just a Housewife”: The Rise & Fall of Domesticity in America. 1987. Barbara Spindel. “The Secret History of Home Economics Review: Engineering the Everyday.” Wall Street Journal. May 2, 2021.
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