The literature in cross-cultural and comparative education has generally ignored the issue of gender and the impact of the curriculum on girls and women. The research reported here focuses on the implications of the experimental credit-hour curriculum in girls' secondary schools in Kuwait during the 1980s and describes in detail the facilities and curriculum of these schools before their destruction in the Gulf War of 1990. The findings of this study are then applied to curriculum theory and its relationship to changing societal conditions with particular attention to gender and equal educational opportunities. (A list of 15 references is included.) (Author)