Domestic Management and Productivity, not Home Economics (A Business School for Women)

 

For generations, home economics taught cooking and sewing as the sum total of a woman’s place in the home. No wonder Feminism. In truth, however, the home offers women the choice of a multimillion-dollar lifetime enterprise, every bit as demanding of finance and entrepreneurship as any corporation.

Multiplying the number of homes in the US, yields a staggering product, and a large segment of the economy. Sadly, the minimum wage and other restrictions eliminate options and nearly all domestic labor leaving the CEO of the home with little choice but to escape and seek a job that utilizes her talent elsewhere. The fallouts from that economic restraint, include: the stifling of productivity in the trillions, neglected childcare, homelessness, broken families, a taxpayer burden, increased demand for social assistance, demand for elder care and adult children of fatherless families.

The solution requires only a high level of business education and the removal of restrictive regulations. The economy will adapt. Remove minimum wage, remove zoning restrictions against multiple generation housing, rental restrictions, and building restrictions. Most helpful of all, teach women advanced finance, construction and business management. The sewing and cooking will take care of itself with flexible wages and domestic housing. Seniors could experience family support rather than expensive assisted living. Productivity would return to the home-market-segment. 

This proposition depends on a woman’s choice for a high-level education in Domestic-Management-and-Productivity. It could be a highly progressive and highly rewarding solution to an intractable social problem and a massive boost to economic activity, the neglected Velocity multiple that drives the GDP.