ABSTRACT
The only girls who attended schools in late eighteenth-century Sweden were poor, and they went to the same schools as poor boys. From being included in the mixed-sex schools, a shift occurred in early 1800 that saw the establishment of schools specifically for poor girls. This development is investigated in the chapter. The chapter analyzes a process of integration and segregation of the sexes in schools for poor children in order to understand how shifts in conceptions of gender intersected with changing social and economic societal relations of poverty and class. During a formative period when class society developed at the cost of older hierarchies, and when gender was undergoing reconstruction, poor girls played a role. During a few years, when poor girls attended established boys’ schools, they challenged the schools in many ways. Poor girls had to be segregated from boys, but not for the same reasons as the middle and upper classes. They should not learn too much, in terms of either practical or theoretical skills. Gender, age and class intersected, to the disadvantage of the poor school girls. The segregation of the sexes led in just a few years to the foundation of specific girls’ schools for poor girls. The division of the sexes was never fully established however, and mixed-sex schools were still organized and later on institutionalized in the elementary schools.
