ABSTRACT
Optimism and pessimism struggle for precedence in the perception of any obselVer of Swedish efforts to use the country's educational system to break down sex role stereotyping in the schools and, through the development of new attitudes in young people, in society at large. Optimism is in order because the Swedish experience has shown that it is possible not only to win widespread acceptance for the goals of sex role equality in what is, by definition, a bureaucratic and conselVative public entity - state-supported education - but to turn this acceptance into concrete measures of a sweeping nature. Pessimism follows like a cold shower, because these changes, spanning 20 years, have had no measurable effect on the traditional study and career choices of the vast majority of compulsory school leavers, nor have they altered the heavily male dominated character of the school structure.
