The Fall of Home Economics

Hostile takeovers

Part I describes the origins of Home Economics in U.S. Higher Education: Home Economics, Haven or Exile for Women Scientists?

Part II describes notable scientific achievements in Home Economics Research in the interwar years: Home Economics: Advancing Science

Part III describes the anti-feminist turn Home Economics took in the 1950s and 1960s.

Hostile takeovers and the decline of Home Economics

Starting in the late 1960s, male administrators at land-grant institutions conducted something similar to a “hostile” takeover of Home Economics departments and colleges. These units typically underwent significant curriculum changes and were often re-named and re-staffed with young male leaders in the field, ultimately in a drive for prestige. Through the 1960s and 1970s, more male faculty were hired, and male students were taking up larger percentages of graduate and undergraduate enrollment [1].

Between 1971-1975 there was a nearly 37% increase in men’s full-time graduate enrollment in Home Economics [2]. For example, once a man became chair of the combined Departments of Home Economics and Food Science and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley, the unit was rebranded as “Nutritional Science”.

Nerad in The Academic Kitchen, argues that this was due to the embarrassment and impediment to grants that the name “Home Economics” conferred. The dismantlement of the department at Berkeley was apparently conducted without input from faculty or the dean of the college. [3] In the postwar decades, newly available funding opportunities incentivized many land-grant institutions to increase research productivity. Many institutions focused on increasing faculty hires, doctorate graduation, and research production [4].

However, these efforts rarely included women. Female undergraduate enrollment in STEM fields were deliberately pared back, and female administrators and faculty were slowly eased out of their positions and replaced by men [5]. Unfortunately, this trend extended to the “havens” that Home Economics units provided women.

Cornell University

At Cornell University, a similar takeover occurred. A nearly all-male committee argued that the College of Home Economics was “academically weak” and required rebranding once the current dean, Helen G. Canoyer reached mandatory retirement age. This was seemingly approved, and a new Dean, David C. Knapp, with no Home Economics experience was hired [6]. The curriculum and programs were entirely revamped. The college was renamed as the “College of Human Ecology” with areas such as Home Economics Education eliminated. Notably, female student and faculty numbers dropped in the succeeding years [7].

List of departments and number of male faculty in each department within the New York State College of Home Economics and the New York State College of Human Ecology. Source [28].

The basic science requirements had been reduced from 25% of credits in 1941 (30 credit hours), to 20% in 1971 (24 credits) [8] Male faculty members increased to nearly 50% in some departments, with the sole faculty member in Communication Arts being male (Table 1). By 2006, male faculty exceeded female faculty (Table 1). Notably, at least one member of the “Cornell 11” who filed a federal lawsuit in 1980 against the university citing sex discrimination in the hiring and tenure processes was from the college of Human Ecology [9].

Penn State

The College of Home Economics at Pennsylvania State University also underwent a “hostile” takeover. The retirement of Grace M. Henderson, the Dean of the College of Home Economics, was announced in May 1965 [10]. Henderson had transformed the Department of Home Economics, which had consisted almost solely of teacher training, into a college which became a research powerhouse for the university. Departmental units included: Home Economics Education, Child Development and Family Relationships, Clothing and Textiles, Foods and Nutrition, Home Management, and Hotel Administration [11].

By 1966, the college was rebranded as the College of Human Development, and the Home Economics Education major was transferred to the College of Education. The change had been precipitated by a report, two years prior, about how to ‘better’ allocate resources at the university [12]. Under the new dean, psychologist Donald H. Ford, the college took on a more social-service orientation, with its new divisions being Biological Health, Community Development, Individual and Family Studies, and Man-Environment Relations [13].

Purdue University

Other schools, such as Minnesota State, Kansas State, and Purdue underwent more gradual changes. What was typical was that Home Economics teacher training would be moved to a different college or department at the university [14] Then, the other areas of study remained or were expanded upon. The science requirements were often reduced, and more humanity options added. Some programs, like at KSU, kept up active extension programs [15]. Typically, more male faculty were hired and unit names were changed, but there were less radical curriculum changes. For example, Purdue University renamed the School of Home Economics as the School of Consumer and Family Sciences in 1976 [16].

In 1953-1954, Purdue’s School of Home Economics consisted of majors in Vocational Teaching, Dietics and Nutrition, Clothing and Textiles, Food Management, General Home Economics, Housing, Costume Designing, Interior Designing, and Commercial Design, and Home Economics in Business There were only six male faculty of forty-four faculty listed in the department, none of which were department head [17]. With the college change, these areas (with the exception of teaching, which was jettisoned) were consolidated into four areas of Child Development and Family Studies, Consumer Sciences and Retailing, Foods and Nutrition, and Restaurant Hotel, and Institutional Management. The courses were less science-focused, with the chemistry requirements reduced and more humanity options introduced. While the female dean from the College of Home Economics remained dean for the new college, three of the four department heads were male [18]. In comparison, there had been only one male department head in 1974 and zero in 1954 [19].

Other Schools

Home Economics class 1970s

Other programs were eliminated entirely. From 1979-1989, the Department of Home Economics at Iowa State University was ranked top-ten in the country with undergraduate and graduate degrees offered in Child Development, Family Environment, Food and Nutrition, Home Economics Education, Home Economics Journalism, Home Economics Studies, Institution Management, and Textiles and Clothing [20]. By the 1980s, some of the biological, physical, and chemistry requirements had been replaced with natural sciences. In 1992, the department was eliminated, amid protest about depriving those who desired Home Economics teaching degrees [21]. On the other hand, the College of Human Ecology (formerly Home Economics) at Kansas State University, was saved from liquidation in 1990, after vocal protests from faculty, students and alumni [22].

The Home Economics Department at Howard University also underwent gradual change then closure. In 1974, the Department of Home Economics became the School of Human Ecology with some curriculum shifts, but teaching was retained [23]. A woman, Cecile H. Edwards was appointed as dean. Yet, the school was closed in 1991, within a year of the election of a new university president, Franklyn G. Jenifer, who cut the program to redirect resources to improve academic ranking. Edwards called the decision “unconscionable” [24]. Remaining Home Economics programs struggled to find faculty since there were few Home Economics doctoral programs left. And with Home Economics teacher training being jettisoned, there was apparently little thought of how this affected filling high school positions.

Response

However, it was rare that ousted faculty from Home Economics units publicly protested. Instead, they worked to preserve the history of their departments and extolling pioneers in their fields [25]. To an extent, these efforts succeeded and by the 1990s, feminist scholarship had rehabilitated the image of Home Economics majors by emphasizing the professional and economic opportunities these degrees offered, typically for white women with scientific aspirations.

However, women’s progress in other STEM fields in the succeeding decades was slow. Even though nearly half of STEM bachelor’s degrees were awarded to women in 2016, the majority of those degrees were awarded in the fields once encompassed by Home Economics, including Psychology, Life Sciences, and Social Sciences [26].

But even these gains did not translate into women moving up the academic ladder. While women had made up 50% of Life Sciences doctorates since 2004, only 26% of full professors in Life Sciences were women by 2017 [27].

In a sense, Home Economics was successful in segregating women scientists away from the male-typed “prestigious” fields (i.e., Physics, Math, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering) thus maintaining the coeducational research university’s white, masculine STEM spaces.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the history of Home Economics reveals that the field was influenced by racist, sexist, and capitalist motives. In one sense, Home Economics embodied the white, middle-class, male heterosexual ideal by outwardly promoting patriarchal family dynamics, excluding racial and ethnic diversity in their education and outreach, and never breaking from sex-typing and sex discrimination in the field. However, Home Economics departments and colleges provided unprecedented educational and professional opportunities for women. Moreover, Home Economics research and extension played a vital role in the development of the American land-grant university’s mission of education and service. Given how women scientists were so excluded from education and career paths in traditional STEM fields, Home Economics, however flawed as it was, was often their best option.

References

[1] Paul Brown, “Home Economics Changing,” Ohio State Lantern, October 11, 1973; “Home Economics Is for Men, Too,” Ohio State Lantern, November 25, 1964; “‘Home Ec’ Stereotyping Dying,” The Daily Collegian, March 4, 1978; Rick Kepler, “It’s Nice to Have a ‘Man of the House,’” Ohio State Lantern, December 4, 1974

[2] Curtis O. Baker, “Students Enrolled For Advanced Degrees 1975,” 1975.

[3] Nerad, Acad. Kitchen A Soc. Hist. Gend. Stratif. Univ. California, Berkeley.

[4] Roger L. Geiger, “The Ascendancy of the University,” in American Higher Education Since World War II (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019), 91–128

[5] Margaret W. Rossiter, “Postwar ‘Adjustment’: Displacement and Demotion,” in Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 27–49

[6] Edward B. Zuckerman, “Male Tabbed as Home Ec Dean,” The Cornell Daily Sun, April 29, 1968, https://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/; Susan J. Egloff, “Six Ad Hoc Groups Named to Study Home Ec Reports,” The Cornell Daily Sun, March 10, 1967

[7] Margaret W. Rossiter, “The Men Move In: Home Economics in Higher Education, 1950-1970,” in Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of the Profession, ed. Sarah Stage and Virginia B. Vincenti (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), 96–117

[8] Cornell, “Announcement of the New York State College of Home Economics for 1941-42”; Cornell, “Cornell University Announcements New York State College of Home Economics 1966-67” (Ithaca, NY, 1967); Cornell, “Cornell University Announcements New York State College of Human Ecology 1970-71” (Ithaca, NY, 1971)

[9] Lisa Kandel, “Cornell 11 Files Class Suit Alleging Sex Discrimination,” The Cornell Daily Sun, November 3, 1980

[10] “Home, Economic Dean Announces Retirement,” The Daily Collegian, May 8, 1965

[11] Penn State University Libraries, “Challenges of the Post-War Era,” Penn State University Libraries, 1944

[12] Ricky Feilke, “Acting Dean Honored,” The Daily Collegian, November 18, 1966

[13] Penn State University Libraries, “Years of Crises : The 1960s,” Penn State University Libraries, 2022; Penn State College of Health and Human Development, “History of the College of Health and Human Development,” Penn State College of Health and Human Development, 1897

[14] UMN, “Division of Home Economics Education Papers,” University of Minnesota Archival Collections Guides, 1970

[15] E. H. Teagarden and R. L. Johnson, “Extension Home Economics,” in Kansas Cooperative Extension Service 1914-1989, ed. R. O. Graham, 1991, 99–158

[16] Andrei Fokine et al., “Consumer and Family Sciences Celebrates 75 Years of Social Change,” Purdue News, 2001

[17] Purdue, “Purdue University Bulletin 1953-54” (West Lafayette, IN, 1954)

[18] Purdue, “Purdue University Bulletin 1979-81” (West Lafayette, IN, 1981)

[19] Purdue, “Purdue University Bulletin 1953-54”; Purdue, “Purdue University Bulletin 1974-75” (West Lafayette, IN, 1975)

[20] The University of Iowa Libraries, “Guide to the University of Iowa Department of Home Economics Records,” UI Collection Guides, 1991

[21]. Iowa Regents, “No Title” (Des Moines, Iowa, 1991)

[22] College of Human Ecology Kansas State, “History of the College of Human Ecology,”2006; Carol Kellett, “Legacy of Leadership: Human Ecology at Kansas State University,” 2010,

[23] Cecile H Edwards, “Opportunities for Study and Career School of Human Ecology,” New Directions 2, no. 1 (1974): 2–4.

[24] Anthony Depalma, “Howard Slims Down and Reaffirms Its Tradition,” The New York Times, March 6, 1991

[25] Rossiter, “Protecting Home Economics, the Women’s Field.”

[26] NSF, “Field of Degree: Women,” Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering, 2019

[27] NSF, “National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Survey of Earned Doctorates” (Alexandria, VA, 2021); NSF, “Science, Engineering, and Health Doctorate Holders Employed in Universities and 4-Year Colleges, by Broad Occupation, Sex, Years since Doctorate, and Faculty Rank: 2017,” 2019

[28] Cornell, “Announcement of the New York State College of Home Economics for 1941-42”; Cornell, “Cornell University Announcements New York State College of Home Economics 1966-67”; Cornell, “Cornell University Announcements New York State College of Human Ecology 1970-71”; Cornell University, “Faculty Directory,” College of Human Ecology, 2006