3 - The American Home Economics Association and International Fellowships for Chinese Women in the 1930s and 1940s

This paper examines partnerships forged by professional Chinese and American who worked to create bodies of knowledge designed to transform quotidian practices on both sides of the Pacific.  In the 1930s and 1940s, more than a hundred Chinese women went to the United States to learn about the field of home economics, which was grounded in ideas of scientific knowledge, focused on finding solutions to social problems, and forwarded economic development. The American Home Economics Association (AHEA) provided fellowships for a small group of Chinese home economists to study in the US, and thereby hoped to strengthen the field of home economics internationally and domestically through people-to-people contact. The AHEA’s International Committee thereby aligned themselves with elite Chinese who believed elements of gendered development and evolutionary change proposed by American home economists were a good alternative to more radical transformations that went against their interests. This piece will examine the motivations and shifting power dynamics that influenced these exchanges through an analysis of reports and academic writings of home economists. It will suggest how a small cohort of Chinese AHEA fellows and American home economists contributed to international conversations about women’s roles in global modernity and development agendas at the very start of the global Cold War.