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Human Ecology and Family Sciences – Part I adolescents develop an understanding of themselves, and what role food and other resources, fabric and clothing, as well as communications play in their lives. A subject close to HEFS, though not exactly like it, is Home Science. It has been taught under this title at both the higher secondary and university levels in different parts of the country. With changing times, many disciplines of study have taken new forms and assumed a more contemporary nomenclature; for example, Life Sciences is being used to refer to biological sciences. There was a need to modernise the content of Home Science at the school level, and give it a title that would release it from being associated mainly with the home and with the tasks traditionally done by girls and women. At the university level the University Grants Commission undertook this exercise many years ago. Here, a brief history of the evolution of Human Ecology and Family Sciences from the field of Home Science in India would be in order. In the early 20th century there were many institutions in different parts of the country that had introduced courses in Foods and Nutrition, Clothing and Textiles, as well as Extension Education. These different disciplines were brought under the rubric of Home Science in 1932, when an institution by the name of Lady Irwin College was set up in Delhi to promote women’s 2 education. This was the time before India’s independence from the British rule, when very few girls attended school, and hardly any institutions for women’s higher education existed. A few eminent women were in the vanguard of the movement to liberate India. Among them were Sarojini Naidu, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, stalwarts of the All India Women’s Conference, who conceived of and established the Lady Irwin College. The British Viceroy in India at that time was Lord Irwin, and his wife, Lady Dorothy Irwin too supported the setting up the college. Hence, the College was set up in her name. The goal was to serve the home and society with equal resolve, so as to remove social and educational inequalities that prevented women from reaching their potential. Thus, Home Science was not intended to be a subject only about the ‘home’, but to be an interdisciplinary field that would empower its students to enhance their own quality of life and that of other individuals and families. However, over time, the label Home Science (in the mind- set of lay people and non-Home Science professionals) became associated primarily with learning culinary skills, laundry and child-care. While at the higher education level an upgrading of the curricula as well as resetting of the professional standards took place several years ago, at the high school level, its gender-typing and association with ‘cooking and laundry’ remained. In fact, those were some of the reasons why boys were either not admitted to this area by the schools, or they themselves shied away Reprint 2026-27