Dictionary of Women Experts

Biography

Irena Gumowska (Gumowska-Dąbrowska) 1912 Krakow- 1991 Warsaw. She was an agricultural engineer by education, a journalist, widely known as an expert on lifestyle, home economics, healthy diet and aesthetics of everyday life. She authored 42 advice books on cooking, dieting, healthcare, and savoir-vivre. 

Family Background and Personal Life

Gumowska was born in Krakow, into a well-off family of Marian Gumowski, a landowner in Wielkopolska region and historian, and Eliza, nee Barańska. Marian Gumowski was a professor of history, an author of significant publications on numismatics and stratigraphy. From 1945 he worked at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Eliza Gumowska worked at home and cared for her four children, she died of typhoid during World War II. 

Very little is known about Irena’s personal life. She married Stefan Dąbrowski, who was a head of the publishing department of the Institute of Mental Hygiene, and gave birth to their son, Adam.  She always used her maiden name “Gumowska” to sign her publications.

Education and Professional Path

Irena graduated from the General Zamoyska High School in Poznan, and in 1933-1937 she studied at the Faculty of Agriculture at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where she received a master’s degree in agriculture. Additionally, she completed a course in social agronomy and in 1939 began working as a home economics instructor for the circles of rural housewives. According to her self-written cv, during the Nazi occupation (1939-1945), she was a student of psychology and mental hygiene at the secret Study of Mental Hygiene and Applied Psychology in Zagórze near Warsaw. At the same time, she worked as a local agronomist, specializing in the problems of rural households. After 1945, Gumowska first moved to Lublin, then to Warsaw and started working as a journalist, focusing on the problems of the household. Until September 1946 she ran a women’s column in Sztandar Ludu, a daily newspaper published by the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR). In Warsaw she contributed to Dziennik Ludowy, and signed her articles on household management with her initials and the title of engineer.

She joined the Socio-Civic League of Women (SOLK) and from February 1946 to October 1947 was editor-in-chief of the biweekly Kobieta Dzisiejsza published by the League. She was also involved in the works of the Institute of Home Economics, which operated under the auspices of the League, and began to cooperate with the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. This gave her the opportunity to combine her social activity with her academic ambitions and interest in euthenics, a discipline at that time developed at this university. Gumowska entered the Study of Home Economics, which operated within the Department of Horticulture from 1946 to 1949, and in 1948 she submitted an application to start her Ph.D. degree program under the supervision of prof. Maria Gutowska, the head of the Study. The study was closed after three years, and Gumowska never finished her Ph.D studies. 

Probably due to personal conflicts she lost her position at the Institute of Home Economics (dissolved in 1950). From the early 1950s, she focused on her career as a journalist. In Kobieta, she published articles on nutrition, eating habits and modernizing the kitchen space, signing them with her professional title “engineer”. She regularly contributed to   Przyjaciółka, the most popular women’s magazine in socialist Poland, and from the early 1960s she had her own column, “Dla każdego coś dobrego” (Something good for everyone). She also participated in radio and television programs. 

In the mid-1950s Gumowska started publishing high-circulation books that popularized expert knowledge, first on agriculture, then on home economics, nutrition and dieting. She quickly became a recognized popular expert and an authority. Her books, although written in an informal style, with a lively narrative, were based on actual knowledge and introduced the general public to the latest concepts in nutrition, preventive health care, and the fundamentals of psychology.  

Professional and International Networks

Having given up her academic career, Gumowska did not belong to any formal academic networks. However, prominent Polish doctors, such as prof. Stanisław Józef Grochmal, a neurologist from Krakow, nutritionists and home economists, worked with her as consultants. According to her own words, she took various courses and established contacts with American experts during her visits to the United States, so she had access to foreign publications. Gumowska was interested in the new trends in “natural medicine” and recommended massages, herbal medicine and alternative therapeutical methods such as acupressure. In this field she cooperated with Jadwiga Górnicka, a doctor and expert in natural therapies. 

Prevention and health care were the focus of Gumowska’s publications on health and nutrition. In her books on lifestyle and housekeeping, she promoted the time saving, efficient model of the American household, criticizing traditional methods of housekeeping and emphasizing the need to modernize Polish homes. She also promoted modern beauty culture, including dieting and anti-ageing, however she did not limit this to women.

Activism and Research with an Emphasis on Feminist Knowledge Production

Although not an activist, Gumowska was a member of the Socio-Civic League of Women and, from 1948, of the League of Women (LK). From the beginning of her career, she focused on so-called women’s issues, and it was problems such as women’s double burden, unpaid reproductive work that led her to the idea of modernizing the household toward the efficient model managed by women, based on the equal division of labor and the use of time-saving appliances. She advocated women’s right to work outside the home and emphasized that their mass entry into the paid workforce required a redefinition of the gender roles within the family. She argued that “a woman who works like a man, just like he does, does not have time to worry only about the kitchen” (Kobieta 1948, 11, p. 22) and promoted the partnership family model. 

Legacy and Influence

Irena Gumowska was the author of over 40 books on a wide range of topics, including lifestyle, savoir vivre, the aesthetics of everyday life, cooking and dieting, natural therapies and preventive health care.  She was a ‘popular expert’, an advocate of gender equality and women’s interests in the sphere of everyday life.

Selected Publications

Gumowska, Irena, Od ananasa do ziemniaka : mały leksykon produktów spożywczych [From pineapple to potato: a small lexicon of foods], (Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy CRZZ, 1976) 

Gumowska, Irena, Sztuka życia [The Art. Of Living], (Warszawa: Towarzystwo Wiedzy Powszechnej, 1967)

Gumowska, Irena, My i nasz dom [We and our home], (Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna, 1956) 

Gumowska, Irena. Venus z patelnią [Venus with a frying pan], (Warszawa: WPL, 1959). 

Bibliography

Bańkowska, Anna, O sprawach nie tylko dla kobiet…pisze mgr inż. Irena Gumowska, „Poradnik Bibliotekarza” 1962, no 11-12, p. 359-363