From housewife’s expertise to the women’s movement: Empowerment through scientific management during the progressive era

Abstract

Scientific Management is usually studied for what it brought to factories, production and the organization of work: yet, it did much more. Our contribution focuses on how Taylor’s ideas were adapted to domestic occupation by overlapping with another forgotten movement promoting household efficiency and primarily led by women: Home Economics and its sanitary science. Drawing on the methodology of intellectual history, we examine the pioneering writings of Ellen Richards, Mary Talbot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Christine Frederick and see how they promoted female vindications and emancipation. If Scientific Management is criticized for its alienating effects, its spillovers were also partially positive during the Progressive Era. Indeed, Scientific Management was envisioned as a normative guide to a new model of society and, surprisingly, as a tool for emancipation and empowerment, meant to provide women with a mean of social liberation and legitimization. Furthermore, the social movements that characterized the Progressive Era became crucial to tackling democratic issues through an empirical lens. Engaging in some of Critical Management Studies major themes, this contribution to management history aims to produce novel insight on Scientific Management and its contribution to domestic work and women’ identity in the early 20th century.