The study aims to investigate how and why the education at Borås Technical Weaving School, as a vocational school, was designed the way it was. Moreover, what educational opportunities it provided, and what vocational ideals the school had for women and men between 1890 and 1938. The study applies Judith Butler’s gender theory of performativity in combination with the concept of heteronormativity as the theoretical framework. Few studies exist in the scientific field of educational history regarding vocational education in Sweden, and even fewer with a gender perspective or examining vocational education at the intermediate level, which the weaving school was.  

The study, which is a qualitative case study, applied content analysis as an additional methodological tool to analyze the data. The sources used in the investigation to answer the study’s questions and purpose were annual reports from the school and commemorative and anniversary publications. The result demonstrated that Borås Technical Weaving School, as a vocational education, also had a gender constructive role in combination with having a reproductive role, as mentioned in previous research. The school constructed contrasting vocational ideals for women and men. The men had more educational opportunities at the school than the women, even after the education underwent several reconstructions. Furthermore, the education and its structure and reasonings coincided with preexisting ruling heteronormative gender roles and constructed traditional binary gender subjects. The manifold reforms and reorganizing of the school contributed to the formation of what it meant to be a male and female weaver at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.