Keeping the Nation’s House: Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China

The term home economics often conjures images of sterileclassrooms where girls learn to cook dinner and swaddle dolls, farremoved from the seats of power. Helen Schneider unsettles thisassumption by revealing how Chinese women helped to build a nation, onefamily at a time. From the 1920s to the early 1950s, home economiststransformed the most fundamental of political spaces - thehome - by teaching women to nurture ideal families andmanage projects of social reform. Although their discipline came undoneafter 1949, it created a legacy of gendered professionalism andreinforced the idea that leaders should shape domestic rituals of thepeople.