how to control which option to be selected in SELECT control?

Question

What I tried is by adding selected,but not working:

<select>
      <option value="-1" selected>--</option>
      <option value="0">femail</option>
      <option value="1">male</option>
     </select>

Answer 1

Try selected="selected"

Answer 2

Several browsers will save your current selection when you reload the page. Try clearing your browsers cache and reloading the page (shift + f5). What you have above should be correct.