The Drift of Men: Business Education, Women Students, and the Decline of Arts in the 1920s

Abstract

The rising enrolment of women in faculties of arts significantly influenced the development of business education in English-Canadian universities. To identify commerce as a professional program for men, and to fortify its academic integrity, universities eliminated skill-based courses in office procedure from the curriculum. This article explores early business education by focusing on two universities: Queen’s, which introduced commerce in 1919; and Western, which established commerce in 1920, and then secretarial science in 1924. The study provides an opportunity to explore the gendered division of business education. It assesses the ways in which commerce was constructed as an applied social science within the arts faculty, not just to protect the discipline from charges of vocationalism, but to assert authority over knowledge production by excluding women and their connection to secretarial work.