Federal Policy for Sex Equity in Vocational Education.

The article discusses federal policy for sex equity in vocational education in the U.S. Attention has been given to the sex equity provisions of the 1976 amendments of the Vocational Education Act (VEA) because of that legislation's emphasis on equity issues and because of vocational education's role in preparing young people for the world of work. The training that young people receive is an important determinant of the type of employment subsequently obtained. The passage of the 1976 amendments to the VEA required that recipients of federal funds, for the first time, undertake positive measures to eliminate sex bias, sex stereotyping, and sex discrimination from their vocational education programs. Based on a 1979 vocational education Office of Civil Rights survey, nearly half of the vocational education programs offered in the 10,584 public schools and colleges included in the survey had enrollments that were exclusively male or female. Women are concentrated in the traditionally female areas of health, consumer and homemaking, occupational home economics, and business and office programs.