Rural Women, Higher Education, and the Mixed Legacies of Early 20th Century Domestic Science Initiatives

Today, institutions of higher education enroll rural students, and specifically rural women, at rates lower than their urban counterparts (Flora et al., 2018). Additionally, the disciplines of teaching and home economics continue to dominate the curricular choices of rural women. As higher education scholars continue to explore these phenomena, a historical understanding of the relationship between rural women and education in the United States can provide an important context for scholarship about these educational patterns.This article explores the mixed legacies of three educational programs/policies implemented in the early 20th century and the ways in which they shaped educational practices for rural women in the United States: (a) the formalization of home economics as a post-secondary academic discipline, which set the stage for legislative developments; (b) the passage of the Smith-Lever Act, which institutionalized extension programs housed at land-grant colleges and universities; and (c) the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act, which brought vocational training, inclusive of home economics, to the lower schools. Collectively, these programs and policies provide insight into the complexity of the relationship between rural women and higher education, highlighting why some rural women participated in post-secondary education while others were not heavily present on college and university campuses but were still engaged in specific educational practices, often led by colleges and universities.