Genus och utbildning : ekonomisk-historiska studier i kvinnors utbildning ca 1870-1970

The thesis is divided into three sections. The first, “From an education market to public education. The Swedish girls’ school 1874-1962”, deals with the integration of girls’ secondary education into the public education system, as well as with the strengthening and weakening of this special, gender-coded education. Secondary education was gender segregated and integration involved a process of several stages. This thesis concentrates on three of the stages, mainly the school reforms of 1927/28 and 1962, and, touches on state subventions in 1874. A consequence of integration was diminishing differences in, among other things, the contents of education, but in 1928 “female” competence was strengthened in the municipal girls’ school curriculum and, thereby, education’s family function. My conclusion is that the strengthening of the girls’ “female” competence and education and family functions in 1928 probably had a connection with the labour market for higher white-collar staff. Thus, the very design of the girls’ school became a means to preserve the patriarchal gender order and work distribution. That the weakening took place in a period when conditions in the labour market, in terms of certain decisive elements, were different strengthens my hypothesis that there was a connection between the strengthening of girls’ education and family functions and conditions in the labour market. The patriarchal gender order is based on perceptions of gender differences and a hierarchical order in which men are superior to women, which is really a concept of essentialism. I also investigate the long-term connection between gender ideology and education that has affected the development of girls’ schools. The second section, “Women’s Vocational Education – The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and The Swedish Employers’ Confederation (SAF) within the Joint Industrial Training Council (AY) and the Swedish Women’s Labour Market Committee (AKN) 1951–1975”, takes up aspects of voca-tional education and gender division of labour. I investigate how the labour market’s parties – LO and SAF worked towards changing the gender-bound education choices and getting women to choose industry-oriented vocational education in two cooperative organisations, AY and AKN. Co-operation between the parties in AKN aimed to increase the supply of women for industry, and to improve working conditions for those women who were already employed there. By means of information and propaganda AKN hoped to encourage girls to obtain qualifications for higher positions in the labour market and so change the gender-bound education and occupation choices. The parties’ efforts to change the gender-bound vocational education choice was not successful. The third section, “From women as a collective group to individual gender variations, SAF and the gender order 1948 – 1973” discusses the gender ideological changes within SAF. Based on the assumption that the gender system is affected both materially and ideologically by women’s wage labour, the hypothesis generated is that increased relative demand for women’s labour gave rise to gender ideological changes within SAF during the period investigated. My conclusions are that on the employer side there was a development of ideas in the post-war period, concerning women in the labour market, that was characterised by both continuity and change. The period 1948 - 1973 can be divided into two sub periods with the years around 1960 as the important dividing line.