Admission policy of Swedish teacher education favouring men: Discussion in Parliament in 1962

Abstract

In 1962 the Swedish Parliament decided on a school reform. Meritocracy and equal opportunity were important goals. However, these ideals were not applied to elementary school teacher education, where a sex quota policy favoured male applicants. In the parliamentary debate, a woman member of the Right Wing Party raised objections to the policy. A man representing the Social Democrat government’s education politics had to explain why the admission policy that favoured men was not abolished. By evoking historical ideas of women teachers as inferior, and warnings of the feminisation of schools as a great threat, the admission rules were defended. Further, analysis of the debate shows that women were supposed to hold back their individual rights and a woman arguing in favour of a gender-neutral admission policy risked being labelled ‘unwomanly’.