Description:
The main issue of this article is to discuss how the gender roles were reflected in the organisation of popular education in Sweden, and what this meant to women’s positions. During the twentieth century women were forced to accept male norms saying that popular education should be based on the principle of sex neutral institutions. Still women had small possibilities of influencing the activities in ways not in accordance with male preferences within these mixed but male controlled institutions. Women’s real freedom of action has therefore been limited, although they have constituted the majority of participants both in folk high schools and educational associations for the last 50 years. Alternative education ventures, which were not organized within the publicly supported institutions, were be definition not recognized as popular education. This has made them invisible and given them less favourable economic conditions but at the same time left them free from external influence. This was the case for a large part of the educational work within women’s movement.