Chapter 208

That afternoon. As a former girls' school, Haneoka had once tailored many courses directly to the leadership's stereotyped expectations of young women. Though co-education had led to the abolition of several such classes, a fair number remained—flower arrangement, yoga, and home economics, to name a few. Take home economics, for instance. While male students were permitted to enroll, it was not mandatory. Given the cultural climate of Japan where boys rarely stepped into the kitchen—and compounded by the fact that there were no cool outfits or pretty profiles of girls to admire—the boys mostly stayed away. Consequently, the gender ratio in the home economics classroom skewed overwhelmingly female.