Ideologies, Gender and School Policy: a Comparative Study of Two Swiss Regions (1860–1930)

Abstract

Switzerland provides an interesting case study for the development of educational policies. As a result of federalism, each state – called a canton – worked out its own school system in relative independence. How can various political and religious environments generate different educational systems according to gender? Which factors promote or hamper gender equality in school policy and equal parental investment in girls’ and boys’ education? This paper proposes a comparative study of two Swiss cantons, one Protestant and progressive, the other Catholic and conservative, between 1860 and 1930. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative methods, a multilevel analysis is conducted. Cantonal ideologies and visions regarding gender and education emerge from the content analysis of educational periodicals and school manuals; administrative and legislative sources allow us to follow the school policy and its implementation down to the local level; and the impact of these discourses and policies on parental investment in boys’ and girls’ education is measured through a multivariate statistical analysis of the educational career of about 2300 children, living in four villages that experienced the same economic conditions. The results provide a striking evidence of the greater discrimination against girls in Catholic culture.

Notes

¹ For Switzerland: Head‐König, Anne‐Lise, and Liliane Mottu‐Weber. Femmes et discrimination en Suisse: le poids de l’histoire – XVI^e – début XX^e siècle – Droit, éducation, économie, justice. Genève: Publication du Département d’histoire économique, 1999.

² Mosconi, Nicole. La société, l’école et la division sexuelle des savoirs. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994.

³ Hofstetter, Rita, Charles Magnin, Lucien Criblez, and Carlo Jenzer, eds. Une école pour la démocratie – Naissance et développement de l’école primaire publique en Suisse au XIX^e siècle. Berne: Peter Lang, 1999.

⁴ Coale, Ansley J., and Susan C. Watkins. The Decline of Fertility in Europe : The Revised Proceedings of a Conference on the Princeton European Fertility Project. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.

⁵ Praz, Anne‐Françoise. De l’enfant utile à l’enfant précieux. Filles et garçons dans les cantons de Vaud et Fribourg, 1860–1930. Lausanne: Antipodes, 2005.

⁶ Caldwell, John. “Mass Education as a Determinant of the Timing of Fertility Decline.” Population and Development Review 6, no. 1 (1980): 225–55.

⁷ Before 1900, villages are homogeneous with regard to religious affiliation. Between 1900 and 1914, a very slight religious heterogeneity occurs in the two industrialized villages because of the arrival of workers and managerial staff in the chocolate factories, but they would leave the villages during the war and the postwar crisis.

⁸ Fortunately, the missing data are concentrated in the generations born before 1880, when the implementation of compulsory schooling was in its initial phase.

⁹ Johansson, S. Ryan. “Implicit Policy and Fertility during Development.” Population and Development Review 17, no. 3 (1991): 384.

¹⁰ Baubérot, Jean. “De la femme protestante.” In Histoire des femmes en Occident.Vol. 4. Le XIXème siècle, dir. Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot. Paris: Plon, 1991: 199–213; De Giorgio, Michela. “La bonne catholique.” In Duby and Perrot. Histoire des femmes en Occident, Vol. 4, 169–97; Houbre, Gabrielle. “Demoiselles catholiques et misses protestantes: deux modèles éducatifs antagonistes au XIX^e siècle.” Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du protestantisme français (janvier–février–mars, 2000): 49–68.

¹¹ The educational periodicals available for the two cantons are the following: Bulletin pédagogique, published in Fribourg since 1872, and the two corresponding periodicals for the canton of Vaud, which united during the period, namely L’Ecole, published in Lausanne between 1873 and 1901, and L’Educateur, an educational periodical diffused in French‐speaking Protestant Switzerland and published in Lausanne and Neuchâtel from 1865. All the articles that referred to the topic studied, namely gender, were analysed, namely 51 articles that have been coded and submitted to various grids of analysis.

¹² The content analysis of school manuals involves quantitative as well as qualitative examination (frequency of certain topics, frequency of the masculine and feminine characters, classification of the characteristics and actions attributed to them, implicit morality induced through the narratives, etc.). As this analysis is time‐consuming, two reading books were concentrated on for the second primary degree (8–12 years), published in Fribourg (1890) and Lausanne (1903) and used in classes from the turn of the century until the end of the 1920s. Anon. Livre de lecture à l’usage des écoles primaires du canton de Fribourg, Degré moyen. Fribourg, 1890. Bonjour, Emile, and Louis Dupraz. Livre de lecture à l’usage des écoles primaires du canton de Vaud, Degré intermédiaire. Lausanne, 1903. These results were compared with the content of manuals for other school levels and for the period that followed; there was no obvious change of content.

¹³ For both cantons, the sources are the following: annual reports of the cantonal governments, messages presenting the new school laws, reports of the school inspectors, correspondence between cantonal and local administrations. The content analysis systematically compiled the terms and phrases supporting the arguments in defence of the necessity of education and regular school attendance.

¹⁴ During the 1920s, a slight modification was perceptible in this official discourse of the canton of Vaud, due to economic crisis and political change, when conservative and patriotic ideologies, above all a fierce anti‐communism, gained in importance. In this frame, education was seen not only as an end in itself but sometimes as a guard against collective threats such as economic stagnation or the arrival of a foreign workforce.

¹⁵ Moreover, these results are based on the final decision of the cantonal inspector. When considering only the opinion of the school commission, sometimes corrected in favour of girls by the inspector, the sex gap would be greater.

¹⁶ ‘B. J. nous nous informe qu’il se trouve dans l’obligation de garder à la maison sa fille et son fils aîné pour faire le travail, vu que son épouse est gravement malade et qu’il n’a pas les moyens de se payer une servante. Nous lui avons immédiatement répondu que nous étions d’accord pour que la fille aînée reste à la maison, mais nous exigeons que le fils continue à fréquenter la classe.’ Broc/FR, local archives, minutes of the school commission, 29 November 1926.

¹⁷ Caldwell. “Mass Education.”

¹⁸ There was no exploration of the specific content of the teaching in the various post‐primary schools, as the decisive point for analysis is not pedagogical but economic. On the one hand, this post‐primary formation was considered necessary for certain professional careers, on the other hand, it entailed costs for the parents: monetary costs (that primary schools did not imply) and also opportunity costs (the child’s availability for work was reduced for one or more years). Following this criterion and according to the available sources (pupil listings, school attendance registers, correspondence asking for grants, subsequent profession given in the marriage register, etc.) it was possible to ascertain for 576 children attendance at the following post‐primary schools: apprentissages (professional training for which a course of study with classes and exams existed in the canton during the period), école normale (for future primary school teachers), école secondaire (one or two years after primary school, in various courses of study – general, commercial, science/arts), collège or lycée (science/art course of study).

¹⁹ Bocquier, Philippe. L’analyse des enquêtes biographiques à l’aide du logiciel STATA. Documents et manuels du CEPED No 4. Paris: Centre français sur la population et le développement, 1996.

²⁰ Praz, Anne‐Françoise. “Politique conservatrice et retard catholique dans la baisse de la fécondité: l’exemple du canton de Fribourg en Suisse (1860–1930).” Annales de démographie historique 2 (2003): 33–55.

²¹ Garrett, Eilidh, and Simon Szreter. “Reproduction, Compositional Demography, and Economic Growth: Family Planning in England Long Before the Fertility Decline.” Population and Development Review 26, no. 1 (2000): 45–80.

²² With respect to a Catholic girl who has no younger brother. This variable is not categorical but numeric.

²³ Louise Tilly and Joan Scott first established this mechanism in their comparative study of the industrial revolution in France and Britain. Tilly, Louise A., and Joan W. Scott. Women, Work and Family. New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1978.

²⁴ A later example of such a resort to naturalist arguments for justifying sex‐based discrimination: for 25 years (1957–1982), the school authorities of the canton of Vaud applied a sex‐differentiated scale for the entrance exam to college that was more rigorous for girls, because they were supposed to be more mature and more studious than boys in adolescence. Seized by a group of parents who called upon the new constitutional article guarantying gender equality, the Federal Court abolished this cantonal discrimination in February 1982.