Data story
Girls, boys and the course of study: who took commercial, college and technical in Massachusetts high schools
The course line in the yearbook, crossed with first names, shows how girls and boys were steered.
Yearbook names show how the sexes were sorted by course. Counting first names, 75.9% of seniors in the commercial course had girls’ names; in the industrial and technical courses, 3.2%. The college-preparatory course was nearly even (45.7%), and the normal (teacher-training) course was 96.1% girls’ names.
- 55.8%of all seniors had girls’ first names
- 75.9%of commercial-course seniors
- 3.2%of industrial and technical
- 84.2%at Springfield’s High School of Commerce
Who took which course
Among all girls’ names with a printed course, 44.3% were in the commercial course and 29.6% in a college-preparatory, classical or scientific one. Among boys’ names the order reverses: 44.9% college-preparatory, 17.9% commercial and 17.0% industrial or technical. The industrial course took 0.4% of girls. Of 567 seniors in a normal course, 22 had boys’ names.
Which schools were mostly girls, and mostly boys
Most general high schools had a majority of girls: across the 17 coeducational schools with 700 or more classified names the share runs from 50.9% to 68.5% and averages 58.0%. At the extremes were Springfield’s High School of Commerce (84.2%, 1940–45), Springfield Technical High (27.1%) and Boston Latin, a boys’ school in these years (0.0%). In every coeducational school the girls’ names were the majority or close to it.
Year by year
Cambridge High and Latin ran from 75.5% girls’ names in 1915 to 57.4% in 1930; New Bedford High from 59.1% in 1924 to 69.2% in 1945, with its wartime classes of 1944 and 1945 at 73.0% and 69.2%. Those wartime figures are the share of names among the seniors who graduated; they do not say who had left for work or the service.
How we counted
“Girls’ names” and “boys’ names” are first names given to girls or boys in that era (a cached judgement of each distinct name; same method as the first-names story). Names used for both, and strings that are not names, are left out: 3,029 of 50,705 seniors. This counts names, not people, and says nothing about any individual.
The school chart uses every published senior of schools with 700 or more classified names. The course chart uses 133 yearbooks that print a course for at least 30% of their seniors, 19,093 seniors with a printed course and a classified name. The printed course line is sorted by keyword into six groups; 948 lines fit none and are left out.
Because the archive publishes pages only for entries it could read and match, the published share is not a census of any class. The script is work/stories/s07_course_and_sex.py.
The scans belong to the libraries that digitised them; each person page links back to its scan. Corrections and removal requests: hello@theclassalbum.com or /rights.
See the schools: High School of Commerce, Technical High School, Boston Latin.
Use these charts
Reporters, librarians, teachers and society newsletters are welcome to use the charts on this page with a link back. Copy the snippet under the chart you want; it carries the credit. Every number can be recomputed from the archive’s data (see “How we counted”), and a reporter who wants a different cut, such as one school or one class year, can ask at hello@theclassalbum.com.
girls-share-by-course.png
<a href="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/"><img src="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/girls-share-by-course.png" alt="Girls' names as a share of each course" width="1200" height="675" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a> <p style="font-size:.85em">Chart: The Class Album (theclassalbum.com), from yearbooks digitised by public libraries and posted on the Internet Archive. <a href="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/">Girls, boys and the course of study: who took commercial, college and technical in Massachusetts high schools</a></p>
girls-share-by-school.png
<a href="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/"><img src="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/girls-share-by-school.png" alt="Girls' names as a share of each school" width="1200" height="675" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a> <p style="font-size:.85em">Chart: The Class Album (theclassalbum.com), from yearbooks digitised by public libraries and posted on the Internet Archive. <a href="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/">Girls, boys and the course of study: who took commercial, college and technical in Massachusetts high schools</a></p>
girls-share-by-year.png
<a href="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/"><img src="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/girls-share-by-year.png" alt="Girls' share by class year" width="1200" height="675" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a> <p style="font-size:.85em">Chart: The Class Album (theclassalbum.com), from yearbooks digitised by public libraries and posted on the Internet Archive. <a href="https://theclassalbum.com/stories/girls-boys-and-the-course-of-study/">Girls, boys and the course of study: who took commercial, college and technical in Massachusetts high schools</a></p>
More data stories
- Boston University or Harvard? Where Massachusetts seniors said they were headed, 1920s-1940s
- The war in the senior class: Massachusetts seniors who named the service, 1939-1945
- Barbara rises, Mildred fades: first names in Massachusetts senior classes, 1920s-1940s
- Dot, Al, Bob and Red: the nicknames in Massachusetts senior classes, 1917-1945
- The streets that sent the most seniors to high school: Cambridge, Brookline, Springfield and four more cities
- The most common surnames in Massachusetts senior classes, town by town
- Before they were famous: 70 notable people in Massachusetts high school yearbooks
Numbers come from the archive's own records and are reproducible; see how the archive is made.