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A disagreement may occur between Skolverket’s aim to include various perspectives in history teaching, and the realization of the subject amongst students with negative attitudes towards the gender perspective. The object of this overview is to compile and analyze the result of an information retrieval regarding adolescents’ attitudes towards gender history, and how they may affect the teaching frame. Thus, this overview can become a tool for history teachers when implementing gender history in their teaching. Useful material was found through the databases: Education Research Complete (ERC), ERIC via EBSCO, Sociological Abstracts, Google Scholar, and DiVa Portal. Each source has been reviewed and valued based on its relevance to the effects of attitudes in regards to gender history. Therefore, sources processing attitudes around feminism, gender equality, and women’s history have also been valued as useful. The result in this overview conveys both positive and negative attitudes towards feminism, gender equality, and women’s history. However, the research provides examples of how the teacher can affect how the students encounter gender history, and, therefore, also their attitudes towards the subject matter. The teacher is wise to implement a teaching with a gender perspective, which will challenge the students’ preconceived perceptions. Secondly, the research conveys the important use of a variation of historical agents for the sake of each students’ identification within gender history. Thirdly, a significant part of the used sources promotes the idea of including gender history as a vital segment of the traditional history teaching. Otherwise it would remain simply a less valued supplement. Lastly, a relationship-oriented teaching is suggested as a useful tool whilst managing the problems which may occur when teaching gender history.

There have been several studies that have found that history textbooks are not equal when it comes to the representation of men and women. They are characterized by male perspective, where women as individuals and in groups are unapparent. The magazine Historiskan arose as a response to this problem, whose stated purpose is to highlight women in history and creating a gender historiography. When women on the other hand are being highlighted in history, other studies have shown that it is in general only the white Western heterosexual middle-class woman's perspective that historians include. Women of other ethnicity, class and sexuality ​​are excluded. The Swedish schools policy documents expresses that equality must be included in students’ education, and ethnicity, class and sexuality are perspectives to be included in the teaching of history. Based on a qualitative content analysis and intersectional gender theory this essay aims to examine how Historiskan depict women from the social categories; ethnicity, class and sexuality. The result shows that the stories are dominated by white Christian Western women as the norm. Women of different ethnic origin, color and religion exist, to a lesser extent, in which their ethnicity and skin color are more prominent in the narrative. Class and social status is a clear category that explains women's diverse experiences and opportunities. Heterosexuality is the norm, which is depicted as an economic and political agreement between the sexes. The big deviant is the unmarried woman. Det finns ett flertal utredningar som har konstaterat att läromedlen i historia inte är jämställda. De präglas av manligt perspektiv, där kvinnor som individer och grupp osynliggörs. Tidskriften Historiskan uppstod som ett svar på denna problematik, vars uttalade syfte är att lyfta fram kvinnor i historien och skapa en jämställd historieskrivning. När kvinnor däremot lyfts fram, har andra studier visat att historieskrivningen generellt endast inkluderar den vita västerländska heterosexuella medelklasskvinnans perspektiv. Kvinnor av annan etnicitet, klass och sexualitet exkluderas. I skolans värdegrund uttrycks krav på att jämlikhet ska prägla elevers utbildning, samt ska även etnicitet, klass och sexualitet inkluderas i historieämnet. Utifrån en kvalitativ innehållsanalys och intersektionell genusteori genomförs en granskning av hur Historiskan skildrar kvinnor utifrån de sociala kategorierna; etnicitet, klass och sexualitet. Resultatet visar att berättelserna domineras av vita kristna västerländska kvinnor som utgör normen. Kvinnor av annan etnisk tillhörighet, hudfärg och religion förekommer om än i mindre utsträckning, och där framförallt deras etnicitet och hudfärg uppmärksammas mer specifikt. Klass och social ställning utgör en stark kategori som förklarar kvinnornas skilda erfarenheter och möjligheter. Heterosexualiteten utgör normen, som skildras som en ekonomisk och politisk överenskommelse mellan könen. Den stora avvikaren är den ogifta kvinnan.

This study examines how Swedish upper secondary school youth constructed femininity and masculinity in the period 1880–1930. The overall intention of the dissertation is to analyse the gender ideals that are found in texts written by girls and boys in a bourgeois school environment during a period characterised by transformative social changes in society. The source material consists of school magazines and student essays authored by youth in upper secondary boys’ schools, secondary girls’ schools, and co-educational schools. The study analyses gender stereotypes from five different areas: youth, love life, body, parenting and working life. Boys are prone to use gender stereotypes that emphasise the subordination of women vis-a-vis men. The boys’ usage of stereotypes is thus prominent and is widely used in order to reinforce male dominance. They did not problematise or question their role in the society to any great extent. Girls were, to a significantly greater extent than the boys, keen to problematise women’s traditional role in society. This challenges the images of women as complicit in their own subordination. It seems that the girls have not only been aware of their subordination, but also have been more inclined to strive for their emancipation. The girls’ gender stereotypes are diverse and tolerant, and display progressiveness towards the emancipation movement. The young people’s ideal of moderation emerges as a recurring theme. Both the working class and the upper class are used as deterring examples of excess. The changes in society during this period seems to have had little influence on the ideal gender stereotypes, but in terms of emancipation, appears have made the boys more reactionary than the girls. The daughters of the bourgeois pressed forward; the sons of the bourgeois glanced backward.

The overall aim of this dissertation is to explore the connections between rhetoric and civic and moral education. In the Latin schools (trivial schools, cathedral schools, and gymnasiums) in eighteenth-century Sweden, rhetoric still had a prominent position. In examining school rhetoric under the Swedish School Act of 1724, the study takes on rhetoric education in the broad sense, asking questions about teaching design and content, and about which texts were read and written. In addition to this, the dissertation discusses the moral content of the education as well as the function of the texts and exercises of rhetoric education in character and identity formation. The study also demonstrates the practices of rhetoric in schools and gymnasiums. Everyday classroom activities as well as ceremonies and festivities are treated as arenas for the display of erudition, asking questions about eloquence as a possible catalyst for the raising of schoolboys into men and citizens. Drawing from curriculum history, the investigation focuses on the content of the education. The analytical framework regards educational content as multilayered, ranging from conceptual content to content related to school subjects, syllabi and educational programmes, and further to socialisation content. Therefore a number of theoretical and methodological perspectives have to be employed in order to analyse a multitude of sources: from textbooks and records from schools to written curricula. The curriculum history foundation is therefore supplemented by theoretical inspiration from among other things the sociology of education and the sociology of literature, from the history of rhetoric and from gender history. The concept of virtue is given a special role in the construction of civic ideals and masculinities, two important aspects of an erudite identity cultivated in the early modern Latin schools. The dissertation shows that during the long period of time that the Swedish School Act of 1724 was effective – a total of 83 years, until 1807 – school rhetoric changed very little, and the changes that took place did so only slowly. A number of factors explain this rigidity. The same textbook, Elementa rhetorica by Gerardus Johannis Vossius, was used used in Swedish schools throughout the entire period studied. A shortage of textbooks led to older copies being used, and to a manual reproduction of textbooks and educational content.A canon or publica materies of classical, especially Latin, texts connected the branches of the trivium. It also worked as a common resource, read throughout the school: from fables and the short texts of compendia used in the first forms of the trivial schools to the philosophical and literary works used in the gymnasiums. The proximity between school rhetoric and the exemplary classical texts offers a further explanatory factor for the slow changes of 18th century rhetoric education. The rhetoric education in schools and gymnasiums appears as one of the most distinct illustrations of the early modern Swedish school's twofold objective to transmit knowledge and instill virtue. The rhetorical pedagogical programme was not just about the arts and crafts of linguistic ornaments. School rhetoric had an even larger aim, combining knowledge and virtue into the training of an orator. Through the reading of the exemplary texts and the moral lessons taught by them, and through pupils' own co-creation and rhetorical (re)production, a classical, medieval, Renaissance and Reformation legacy was passed on. In this legacy, the aim was virtuous eloquence. The learned world in and around schools and gymnasiums can be considered a premodern or early modern public sphere, filled with rhetorical ceremonials as a display of erudition and scholarly status. At the school level rhetoric was a representative resource that could justify the position of the scholarly community and the clergy, demonstrate the standing of the school and the church site in the city, and distinguish the learned from members of other social groups.

Many of the history books and articles that address a broader readership tend to focus on 'great men'. Popular history publications often offer a form of history that is problematic in its gendering, and that often bears no relation to cutting-edge historical research and/or the historical canon. In view of this, it behoves the writers of popular history to be more aware of their choice of perspective and to adopt a more robust approach to source criticism. Designating the issue outlined here as a type of 'methodological gender-blindness' points to the fact that it is one aspect of a wider structural problem. Since historians have in the past been at the forefront of the development and dissemination of gender theories, it is argued here that it is of the greatest importance for the continued social relevance of the discipline as a whole that historians engage the public by means of popular history. Academic historians should face the challenge of writing works of popular history and of bringing their critical skills to bear on popular history products.

Elsa Fougt (1744–1826), a woman entrepreneur, was one of the leading figures in the late eighteenth-century Swedish book trade. Her main enterprise was the printing house Kongl. Tryckeriet (the Royal Printing House), which was responsible for printing and publishing the official documents of the Swedish realm. Besides her office as Royal Printer, she also ran a publishing house, two bookshops and a type foundry, as well as being the editor of the Swedish newspaper Stockholms Weckoblad. The dissertation analyzes Fougt's different enterprises and her position in the book trade between 1780 and 1810, from the perspectives of sociology of literature and gender history. It consists of five independent articles, preceded by an introductory chapter which summarizes the articles and discusses their main findings. The first two articles explore the office of the Royal Printer during the whole eighteenth century, while the third article concerns Elsa Fougt’s position as Royal Printer. The fourth article is a study of Fougt's publishing house, and the fifth and final article focuses on her international bookshop, where, among other things, she sold clandestine books imported from the STN in Switzerland. Fougt's successful career was made possible by a number of favourable circumstances, the most important being her family background and network. Her father Peter Momma held the office of Royal Printer, and Elsa Fougt and her husband Henric inherited his position when he died. When Henric passed away in 1782, Elsa – as a widow – was legally allowed to take up the office of Royal Printer independently. The fact that Elsa Fougt was a woman does not seem to have particularly affected her role as Royal Printer. In comparison with her predecessors, her position as Royal Printer appears to have been rather strong. She was a shrewd businesswoman who successfully negotiated with the authorities for higher financial compensation. Her office was obviously of greater importance than her gender. Being both a publisher, a printer, and a bookseller, Fougt handled most of the functions of the book trade, although she distinguished between these different functions. Furthermore, rather than just being an intermediary of books, she also took part in the creation of them, for example by initiating texts and editing manuscripts. In the book trade of her time, Fougt can be seen as both a traditionalist – holding the inherited office of Royal Printer – and an innovator, representing a more modern literary system with increased specialization.

This essay focuses on how women and the woman emancipation are described in high school history textbooks from the years 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000, using the theories history consciousness and gender. Two textbooks are analyzed from each period. There are several gender theories, in this essay it is Yvonne Hirdman’s theory concerning woman- and gender history that is used. This means that the woman emancipation and women’s history are analyzed from the perspectives invisible, add, and-, how- and gender history. Concerning the theory history consciousness Jeisman’s four definitions are used. The woman’s role and the woman emancipation are also examined from the variables work, education and the woman’s role at home. During analyzing the text books it became clear that the presence of a history consciousness and gender perspective gradually became higher the newer the textbook was which means there were big differences in the books from year 1970 to year 2000.

This thesis deals with the space for action available to women of the regional elite. The interaction of such categories as gender and class are discussed. The overall purpose is to describe and analyze the role of the county governor’s wife during the period 1900- 1940. The study takes its point of departure in the lives of Ellen Widén and Hanna Rydh, both wives of county governors, and especially treats the area of cultural heritage as the potential public arena for women. Special attention is focused on the cultural heritage as a possible public sphere of activity for women at that time. Cultural heritage has been defined as the cultural and material expressions that were regarded as possessing symbolic value and that have therefore been the focus for various kinds of preservation. Cultural heritage is associated here with a growing field for professional interest and work. Women in general were given specific tasks within the nation. One of these was to safeguard aesthetic and cultural characteristics within the nation, the province and the home region. By working within the sphere of cultural heritage, with arts and crafts and with the preservation of the home region, women were regarded as links between the older and younger generations. The specific characteristics of the home region could be expressed through various textiles. The work of creating specific parish costumes can be seen as one of many examples of a female cultural heritage. The study has shown that the wives of county governors could have a direct and immediate influence on activities in the area of cultural heritage. This research has established that these women formed a more independent power factor than earlier research has maintained. The county governor’s wife did not automatically gain a position of power. She had potential power, an opportunity derived from both class and gender. To transform this potential into power and influence demanded success and skill in the field. When Hanna Rydh, the wife of a county governor, declared herself a candidate for the position of county governor in 1938, it was too much of a challenge to the prevailing gender order. Through a form of ”tyranny of difference” women were prevented from establishing themselves within public spheres that were more masculine by tradition. This could be true of specific fields or of the formal power exercised by the parliament, the government and public offices. If the female elite challenged the men of their own class, their opportunities were circumscribed. I have chosen therefore to speak of both power and “non-power.” Within certain contexts there were good opportunities for the regional female elite to obtain their own space for action. Yet, in other situations the limitations were greater than the opportunities; “non-power” also existed.

This thesis deals with the space for action available to women of the regional elite. The interaction of such categories as gender and class are discussed. The overall purpose is to describe and analyze the role of the county governor’s wife during the period 1900- 1940. The study takes its point of departure in the lives of Ellen Widén and Hanna Rydh, both wives of county governors, and especially treats the area of cultural heritage as the potential public arena for women. Special attention is focused on the cultural heritage as a possible public sphere of activity for women at that time. Cultural heritage has been defined as the cultural and material expressions that were regarded as possessing symbolic value and that have therefore been the focus for various kinds of preservation. Cultural heritage is associated here with a growing field for professional interest and work. Women in general were given specific tasks within the nation. One of these was to safeguard aesthetic and cultural characteristics within the nation, the province and the home region. By working within the sphere of cultural heritage, with arts and crafts and with the preservation of the home region, women were regarded as links between the older and younger generations. The specific characteristics of the home region could be expressed through various textiles. The work of creating specific parish costumes can be seen as one of many examples of a female cultural heritage. The study has shown that the wives of county governors could have a direct and immediate influence on activities in the area of cultural heritage. This research has established that these women formed a more independent power factor than earlier research has maintained. The county governor’s wife did not automatically gain a position of power. She had potential power, an opportunity derived from both class and gender. To transform this potential into power and influence demanded success and skill in the field. When Hanna Rydh, the wife of a county governor, declared herself a candidate for the position of county governor in 1938, it was too much of a challenge to the prevailing gender order. Through a form of ”tyranny of difference” women were prevented from establishing themselves within public spheres that were more masculine by tradition. This could be true of specific fields or of the formal power exercised by the parliament, the government and public offices. If the female elite challenged the men of their own class, their opportunities were circumscribed. I have chosen therefore to speak of both power and “non-power.” Within certain contexts there were good opportunities for the regional female elite to obtain their own space for action. Yet, in other situations the limitations were greater than the opportunities; “non-power” also existed.

The aim of this thesis is to shed light upon the construction of identity within the Swedish- Canadian immigrant group during the first half of the 20th century. The most important sources of ethnic and nationalistic influences this study scrutinizes are the homeland Sweden, Swedish-America, Scandinavian-Canada and the Canadian host society. It also examines the interaction with other social identities, such as gender and religion. Theoretically, this dissertation takes its point of departure in Fredrik Barth’s assumptions on cultural boundaries and ethnic grouping, which emphasizes the meeting and confrontation with other groups as a trigger in the development of a new ethnic identity. The study is carried out on three partly interacting levels: the individual, the organizational and the official/ rhetorical level. On the individual level, the first generation Swedes in Canada was probably as Swedish as they could be concerning identity, culture and social networks. But as it turned out, the shattered Swedish immigration, the vast and often hardly passable Canadian landscape, together with indirect help from the Canadian government, would prevent an extensive establishment of ethnic organizations. The surplus of single Swedish-Canadian men also affected the transference of Swedishness negatively in the change of generations. The intense dialogue with Swedish America, mostly conducted through the Augustana Synod and the Vasa Order, contributed to a new sense of Swedishness. Both these Swedish- American organizations had “Diaspora ambitions” and they relatively soon established a certain cooperation with the pan-Swedish movement in Sweden. Women played an important social, economical as well practical role in both secular and religious organizational life. Many Swedish-Canadians congregations and organizations would have had no future, if not for the women’s commitment. Swedish rhetoric on the official level was carried out by men, to men, in a male language and imaginary. In this context the term Swede thus became synonymous with Swedish man. Both outspoken desires from the Swedish homeland and its actual internal development were considered and reformulated in Swedish-Canadian rhetoric. When the nationalistic discourse changed in Sweden, the Swedish-Canadian rhetoric changed in the same direction. Swedes in Canada also responded to ethnic competition, especially from Norwegians, by trying to define how the two related groups differed. Of certain importance was the signals given from the host society. With a general suspicion of foreign elements together with a demand for assimilation, the Canadian government seems to have hastened the integration process of Swedish-Canadians.

The aim of this thesis is to shed light upon the construction of identity within the Swedish- Canadian immigrant group during the first half of the 20th century. The most important sources of ethnic and nationalistic influences this study scrutinizes are the homeland Sweden, Swedish-America, Scandinavian-Canada and the Canadian host society. It also examines the interaction with other social identities, such as gender and religion. Theoretically, this dissertation takes its point of departure in Fredrik Barth’s assumptions on cultural boundaries and ethnic grouping, which emphasizes the meeting and confrontation with other groups as a trigger in the development of a new ethnic identity. The study is carried out on three partly interacting levels: the individual, the organizational and the official/ rhetorical level. On the individual level, the first generation Swedes in Canada was probably as Swedish as they could be concerning identity, culture and social networks. But as it turned out, the shattered Swedish immigration, the vast and often hardly passable Canadian landscape, together with indirect help from the Canadian government, would prevent an extensive establishment of ethnic organizations. The surplus of single Swedish-Canadian men also affected the transference of Swedishness negatively in the change of generations. The intense dialogue with Swedish America, mostly conducted through the Augustana Synod and the Vasa Order, contributed to a new sense of Swedishness. Both these Swedish- American organizations had “Diaspora ambitions” and they relatively soon established a certain cooperation with the pan-Swedish movement in Sweden. Women played an important social, economical as well practical role in both secular and religious organizational life. Many Swedish-Canadians congregations and organizations would have had no future, if not for the women’s commitment. Swedish rhetoric on the official level was carried out by men, to men, in a male language and imaginary. In this context the term Swede thus became synonymous with Swedish man. Both outspoken desires from the Swedish homeland and its actual internal development were considered and reformulated in Swedish-Canadian rhetoric. When the nationalistic discourse changed in Sweden, the Swedish-Canadian rhetoric changed in the same direction. Swedes in Canada also responded to ethnic competition, especially from Norwegians, by trying to define how the two related groups differed. Of certain importance was the signals given from the host society. With a general suspicion of foreign elements together with a demand for assimilation, the Canadian government seems to have hastened the integration process of Swedish-Canadians.

This dissertation deals with Swedish women writers during the so called Age of Liberty (1720–1772). A total of 141 female authors of printed texts are presented, the majority unmentioned in earlier research. The study is focused on two forms of literature: occasional poetry (poems that were written forspecial occasions such as weddings and funerals) and political texts (general political texts as well as texts discussing women’s issues). A number of authors are discussed more thoroughly, for example the occasional poets Charlotta Frölich, Hedvig Paqvalin and Charlotta Löfgren, and a group of political authors, such as Sweden’s first female journalist, Anna Margareta von Bragner and two female members of the Gyllenborg family, that was part of the Swedish elite. Two chapters are devoted to Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, one of Sweden’s most successful authors during the Age of Liberty. The dissertation is based on gender theory. A double approach is used: a sociological perspective is combined with rhetorical analysis. The sociological perspective reveals that women writers often played an active role in the public sphere, but they also met with great difficulties. Apart from legal and political restrictions, women were denied higher education. One important factor which favoured women writers’ activities was the old ideal of the noble woman, still present in Sweden in the Age of Liberty, whereby women from the upper classes should be active in a variety of ways, including participating in representative contexts. The social position of the writers is of utmost importance to explain why women writers could act the way they did. One major result in the investigation is that female political authors as well as occasional poets acted on behalf of their households and networks. The term “social obligation” is introduced for literature that was written mainly out of social purpose. Using a distinction between power and authority one also can point out that although women writers had no formal or legal authority during this period, they could gain social authority and they did have power. The rhetorical analyses of texts show that women writers were skilled in the art of rhetoric and also reveals that there are no significant differences between texts written by female authors if one compare with texts written by male authors. One explanation to this is the paradoxical nature of classical rhetoric: it had its roots in public life, to which women were denied access, nevertheless it was possible to learn rhetorical methods and techniques without higher education, for example by imitation. Few women writers challenge existing gender-ideals in their texts. But on the other hand, only a handful of the texts written by female authors show signs of humility, and in these rare examples it is brought on by genre or social inferiority. Women writers did not apologize for their literary activity. And just by going public, they crossed the narrow boundaries that (on a symbolic and normative level)were commonly set for women.