[2] In the 1920s and 1930s Bernège wrote articles, spoke at conferences, traveled to other countries to spread her message, ran a school for domestic sciences, and undertook research for industrial companies.

Paulette Bernège, who has sponsored and directs that unique home-management periodical, Mon-Chez-Moi which more than perhaps any other in Europe is attempting to educate the woman in modern scientific housekeeping.".

[7] The Comité national de l’organisation française (CNOF) was founded in 1925 by a group of journalists and consulting engineers who saw Taylorism as a way to expand their client base.

M. Ponthière, managing editor of Mon bureau, was among the founders, as were prominent engineers such as Henry Louis Le Châtelier and Léon Guillet.

The book proposed spending significant time studying and organizing household work, including having the housewife pin a pedometer to her bodice that would record the number and length of steps she takes.

The tone was somewhat bitter, since the Technical Committee for Dwellings established by Louis Loucheur in preparation for a large-scale program of social housing construction had not consulted the journal Mon chez Moi or the Ligue de l'organisation ménagère in their deliberations.

[3] She noted that a housewife in a typical home who climbed a stairway five times per day for forty years did the same work that would be needed to raise the Eiffel Tower by 2.3 metres (7 ft 7 in), and that the distance she traveled between stove and dining table was the same as that from Paris to Lake Baikal.

The 250,000 social houses were made by local artisans with no information about the needs of the occupants, following outdated designs provided by elderly male architects.

[1] The institute, open to bourgeois girls, gave theoretical rather than practical courses and was mainly intended to train journalists, professors and advertising or marketing experts.

[9] Bernège published a series of articles on farming in the Dépêche de Toulouse in 1933, in which she recommended cooperatives as the best approach for rural organization.

[11] For almost all French families in the 1930s Bernège was being completely unrealistic in asserting that a modern housewife needed a vacuum cleaner, washing machine and other appliances.

This would change during the postwar recovery of the late 1940s and the 1950s as awareness spread of the contribution of domestic appliances to high living standards in the United States, and of the need for modern designs for the millions of new homes planned in France.

[13] In the post-war period the Salon des arts ménagers (SAM) played an important role in introducing the innovations championed by Bernège.

Experiments in the inter-war period led to new post-war designs in which the kitchen was moved near to the apartment's entrance, close to the living and dining room.

[14] In Marcel Gascoin's 8-piece "Logis 1949" display at the SAM the kitchen played a central role and followed the ergonomic principles spelled out by Bernège in the inter-war period.

"[16] In reality, the theoretical organization proposed by Bernège was still out of reach of most working women in the 1950s, who did not have the required housing, equipment or social support to achieve their aspirations.

She analyzed household chores such as cooking, laundry, cleaning, ironing, mending, shopping, accounting, decorating, sewing, patient care, childcare and children's education, their frequency and their place in the overall domestic organization.

She found that the typical woman wasted at least two hours per day due to poor facilities, which translated into a huge loss to the French economy.

[2] Traditionally the Parisian apartment had a kitchen at the back overlooking a service yard, with food carried through a corridor to the room where the family ate.

"[21] Bernège argued that the use of labor-saving devices and techniques would improve lives for families in general, and would give women a more cultivated, pleasurable existence with more time to explore fulfilling activities.