By 1930 vocational curricula in the United States had been funded by the federal government for more than ten years and vocational programmes were entrenched in the secondary school curriculum. Vocational courses for young women consisted of training for office work, home economics and some trade education. Course work in all three of these areas had actually existed in secondary schools before the turn of the century. However, this study explains that these courses were of a more simple nature than those advocated by the reform movement. The author demonstrates that the vocational function of schools was enlarged and made more specific in the first two decades of the century. She also demonstrates how sex segregation in vocational training became institutionalized.