Although the meaning of crafts has undergone many social and cultural changes, the gender-specific division of crafts is still significant. Taking this as a standpoint, I examine how crafts and gender are connected in the upbringing and education of girls in Finland. In the Finnish comprehensive school (from 1970 onwards), craft education has been officially gender-neutral. However, the practices of craft education have been gender-biased resulting in most girls studying textile craft and almost all boys technology. The main question under research is: How, in the processes and practices of craft education, are girls socialized and educated towards womanhood? The study focuses especially on textile craft education in the Finnish comprehensive school. The study is multidiciplinary: women´s studies, sociology of education and craft science form the theoretical framework .Data was collected from female teacher-training students at the University of Joensuu through autobiographical writing (N=72) and memory work (group of eight female students and the researcher). Memory work is a collective method created within the field of women´s studies.Although the gendered tradition of crafts is flexible and changing, the research reveals some aspects as to the degree to which the impact of tradition affects the socializing of girls into gendered roles. Textile crafts and being a woman are connected in various ways in the processes of socializing girls into female roles. Textile craft education is attached to feminine values of home, privacy and motherhood. The gendered traditions are maintained regardless of the changes in society and culture. Through working with textile crafts, the girls have been taught qualities ideal to culturally specific female roles in Finland, one of which has been the requirement to possess skills in textile crafts. Excellence in textile craft skills has been considered to be one part of culturally ideal womanhood.The picture the girls have formed of their own female role is connected to their craft skills. The single-sex groups of girls in textile craft lessons have provided a special sphere in which the girls have constructed their own ideas on womanhood. The bond between the girls has strengthened due to their common femininity but a system of hierarchy has also been apparent. The social tradition of women working together and making women's crafts has been continued in the practices of textile craft lessons. The girls' own attitudes towards textile crafts as a gendered sphere are reflected in processes concerning textile craft lessons: the contents, teaching methods, atmosphere in the lesson and the teaching environment. Having had the opportunity to influence the way the subject is taught, had increased the girls' self-evaluation. These kinds of textile craft lessons have been empowering for girls and, as a consequence, have led to the acceptance of textile craft as being a valuable and respected sphere of their own gender. Methods which had restricted and controlled the girls, thus forcing them to accept institutional power, had lead to a low appreciation of textile craft.Culturally and socially constructed gendered meanings are attached to textile craft and technology within the school subjects: textile craft is attached with feminine and technology with masculine meanings. 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