Home Economics: Expertise under Fire

Home economists’ status as food experts began to diminish in the 1960s. Although home economics instruction remained a mainstay of public school education, the home economists themselves lost their foothold in the institutions that had afforded them their earlier cultural authority. On college campuses throughout the country, home economics departments faced attacks by university administrators who discontinued their programs or put men in charge of them. Home economists in the consumer products industries confronted challenges to their professional status from male business-school graduates specializing in marketing and from new specialists known as food engineers and “food technologists.” Although they remained on board, the home economists’ duties became limited to recipe development, and many adopted new titles such as “consumer affairs specialist.” After a brief period of expansion and emphasis on human nutrition during World War II, the USDA reorganized the Bureau of Home Economics and virtually dismantled it.