Domestic Science Schools and Woman's Place

Abstract

Domestic science was originally introduced into the school curriculum to raise the prestige of household work. Every home was to become an efficient and healthy unit within a state working towards ‘national efficiency’ and maintaining its racial superiority. At the same time it was believed that it would be easier to attract girls into domestic service if the status of the work was raised. The girl was destined to spend most of her life as a housewife and mother and therefore it was just as necessary for her to be efficiently trained as it was for the boy to be competent at his trade or profession.

Home is essentially a women's sphere. There is nothing better calculated to develop a woman morally, mentally and physically, than the conscientious performance of all household arts.

— J. W. Turner, N.S.W. Superintendent of Technical Education.

The wife devotes herself to household duties which defy glorification, and which only the philistines of the nineteenth century can promote into virtues.

— Anny Latour.