ABSTRACT
School and classroom norms reinforce and underline sex divisions. This may have seemed a trivial feature of school life. The assumptions about subjects regarded as 'masculine' can bring firm but subtle pressure on girls to 'take a back seat' in science and technology. The processes by which girls are edged out of science and technology follow from this primary framework of gender division: boys succeed in getting more teacher attention, and their way of 'doing' science and crafts is stamped as the ideal or preferred mode. Girls hang back from the physical hurly burly of grabbing the best equipment and leave the boys free to 'hog' available resources. The definition of science and technology as masculine is reinforced by the male-biased textbooks, teacher assumptions and boys' confident assertion of territorial rights in the lab and workshop. Girls 'lose out' in science and technology partly because they never really gain a proper foothold in the subjects.
