Konstruktionen av kön i skolpolitiska texter 1948 - 1994, med särskilt fokus på naturvetenskap och teknik

More girls into science and technology have been a repeated goal in Swedish school politics for some decades. It has been called the gender equality issue. However, neither the ideas associated with science education nor the ideas associated with gender are obvious. The aim of the thesis is to analyse different views of gender, science and technology in Swedish educational policy, as they appear over time in the preparatory documents of the curricula of the nine year comprehensive compulsory school. The purpose is thus to understand the recurrent theme of “girls and science and technology”. The study is a text analysis and the empirical material consists of commission reports, government proposals, motions and minutes of the ensuing parliamentary debates. In the earliest documents girls and boys were described as opposites and their differences were emphasised. However these ideas were not unchallenged. Gender differences were toned down, variations within the genders were emphasised, and it was pointed out that boys and girls are not uniform groups. It was argued that calling areas and tasks female and male are conventions that can be broken. Proposals were made implying a breaking up of the strict boundary between girls’ and boys’ respective spheres of activity. Later a lot of the old ideas were recurring although society had changed. However clear attempts to break the gender borders were also repeated. In this ambition technology was central. From the early 1960s a girl choosing technology stands out as a symbol of a pupil making a gender-crossing choice