Tonight's #VintageMagTweets look at this book by Dena Attar, published in 1990.

This seems to be the staring point for domestic science/home economics: that God created woman to provide a nice lifestyle for man.

Attar argues convincingly that domestic science has been used in a sexist way in schools, sometimes to deter girls from pursuing other subjects and sometimes blatantly as a 'way of keeping them occupied' while the boys got on and did important stuff.

She reminds us that the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 was supposed to stop boys and girls being told they couldn't do a particular subject just because of their sex. But I have plenty of clippings showing that discrimination carried on into the 80s.

Girls were funnelled towards 'home-making' classes, as they were then. Not subjects with a status and career trajectory in their own right.

I think this refers to pre-war schooling, although from my own personal experience in the 70s, I can tell you girls in my primary class were given sewing to do while boys got on and did more exciting projects.

As I say, I have many examples of individuals trying to get their schools to let them take subjects barred to them because of their sex. There must have been tens of thousands more students who grumbled, but didn't take their case to the Equal Opportunities Commission.

When boys did start to do cookery lessons, teachers were indulgent and biased.

Domestic science a compulsory subject for girls but not for boys.

And when boys took cookery, they had a sense that they could make a living out of it; they weren't just doing it to provide a nice home for their partner.

In mixed classes, they tended to take over.

Teaching cookery to boys was basically about preparing them to go out and earn good money with those skills. Girls, not so much.

I will add more to this thread on Thursday.