Home Economics and Women's Gateway to Science

Yiling Zhao, Peking University
Michael Andrews, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Women are underrepresented in STEM overall, but they have fair representations in many fields such as chemistry, biology, psychology, and public health. We propose that women came to dominate these fields because they were exposed to these subjects in large numbers through collegiate home economics in the early twentieth century. Home economics was developed in the context of the prevailing germ theory and was designed as a feminine parallel to agriculture studies at land-grant universities. The unique historical circumstances and institutional setup tied home economic curricula closely to chemistry and biological sciences. Using college-level data from the Commissioners of Education reports, we establish a causal relationship between home economics and women's enrollment in science majors in the cross-section. We further compiled a panel of student majors from 1910-1940 with data collected from various college yearbooks. In a DID framework, we test the effect of opening a home economics major. Compared to when home economics was not available, the presence of home economics led to a higher proportion of women choosing a major in science and a substantial reduction in the science gender gap. Despite a modern curriculum, women who selected into Home Ec were supposedly more conservative. To shed light on occupational outcomes, we compared the labor force participation rate across college counties using the 1910 census. While a larger Home Ec program negatively correlates with the female labor force participation rate, it positively correlates with the female labor force participation rate in technical occupations.

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 Presented in Session 199. Women, Power and Institutions