Home Economics and Women's Gateway to Science

Abstract

We propose that collegiate home economics programs in the early 20th century introduced a generation of women to science, especially biology and chemistry. Using college-level data from the 1910 Commissioner of Education report and a collection of historical college yearbooks spanning 1900-1940, we document that a 10 percentage points increase in the share of women in home economics led to a roughly 3 percentage points increase in the share of women majoring in science. We demonstrate that the result is driven by exposure to science in the historical home economics curricula rather than through selection bias or faculty role model effects. By linking colleges to recent educational data, we provide suggestive evidence for the persistent impact of historical curricula decisions on modern day gender gaps in STEM fields.