The Development of Home Economics as a Field of Knowledge and its Contribution to the Education and Social Status of Women

Abstract

Denmark underwent major changes in the 1800s and the first part of the 1900s, which affected the role of education in the lives of women. Until then, women in Denmark had primarily worked as homemakers with few academic opportunities; but from the early 1900s, home economics developed as a field of knowledge, and several schools of home economics appeared across the country. Several factors contributed to and influenced this development. Focusing on the period 1890–1940, which was particularly important to the development of this knowledge field in Denmark, we consider the interests promoting the growth of this field of knowledge, its educational content, and the contradictory meaning it had for the social status of women. On the one hand, the development of home economics contributed to turning home duties into an educational and occupational area, preparing for a welfare state making the private sphere a public matter. On the other hand, it tied women to the private sphere and prevented their influence in the public sphere.