>>>>You can't force more women to be assembly mechanics to fill a quota.
>>>>
>>>>LOL!!! Back in the 1970's I was a shop teacher.....
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>>>I did better in middle school cooking than I did in metal/wood shop. I was a train wreck with shop, but I could make a killer omelet :)
>>
>>One of the ways I know you're younger than I am. I went to junior high, not middle school, and girls took cooking and sewing, while boys had shop.
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>>Tamar
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>
>I turned 51 in February. I started middle school in 1977 in the 7th grade - it was the first year (at least in Central PA) where they called it middle school instead of junior high.
>

I'll be 58 this month. I was in junior high in 1968-70. In Philly, I think it's still a hybrid between junior high and middle school, but when we moved here to the 'burbs in 1979, I'm pretty sure it was still junior high and that it became middle school a few years later. I don't know when they ungendered those courses, other than that my kids had both in the '90's.

>I actually wasn't aware that prior to that, only boys took shop only girls took cooking/sewing. I vaguely recall I did OK at wood shop but I was a disaster at metal shop. I was great at cooking and sewing (partly because my mother and aunt had taught me a few things) - and because I could throw a baseball harder than any kid in the middle school at the time, no one gave me grief over it.

See, this is an issue on a lot of stuff. When you don't know the history, it's hard to understand the present. As I like to tell kids, I can remember when the want ads (in fact, I can remember want ads :-)) had "Help Wanted-Man" and "Help Wanted-Woman." When I hear about young women who don't think feminism matters, I want to sit them down and tell them about how it used to be and what feminism has done for them.

Tamar