Gendered journeys: experiences of participation in higher education by working class adults
Lyn Tett, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 31st Annual Conference, 3-5 July 2001, University of East London
THIS paper examines the gendered journeys of a small group of working class people towards their participation in HE. Although access to HE remains largely determined by social class (see Scott, 1995) it is important to look at the interactions between class and gender in order to understand the factors that impede participation by nontraditional groups. As bell hooks argues (1989:22) 'There is widespread acknowledgement that sexism, racism and class exploitation constitute interlocking systems of domination'. This paper is based on the students' descriptions of their experience and what they conceive to be the possibilities open to them in education. However, their recollected experiences do not transparently reflect reality but are 'part of a continuous process of identity construction and representations through which [people] make sense of their experience' (Britton and Baxter, 1999:180).
Methodology
The data I will be using to illustrate my arguments come from a study of a group of working-class community activists who were taking a part-time accelerated degree in community education (see Tett, 1999). They were supported on the course by staff from a project called the Lothian Apprenticeship Scheme Trust (LAST). The project 'seeks to achieve equality of outcomes for people whose circumstances, geographic, physical or cultural, would not permit them to consider becoming professionally qualified' (LAST, 1994:2). Documentation on the planning of the course and on the recruitment and selection procedures was gathered and analysed. Once participants had been recruited the application forms and brief written accounts of their work in the community, which were submitted as part of the selection procedures, were analysed. These provided information on their socio-economic and personal characteristics, their role in the community and their reasons for wishing to take part in the course.
Once they had started the course, after three months, eighteen months, and again after two years, the seventeen participants (six males and eleven females all from the Registrar General's classes 4 and 5) were interviewed, individually and in small groups. They were questioned about their experience of, and attitudes to, education, learning and the course. The interviews were transcribed and analysed and this information was used to identify common themes. Interviewees were provided with copies of the transcripts and encouraged to reflect on the issues that they had raised. Some also engaged in the writing of brief autobiographies focussing on the theme of learning and education and made these available to me. All of these data are used to illustrate my arguments throughout the paper. In the text their first initial identifies interviewees and some demographic data is provided.
Gendered journeys
Bourdieu (1993: 88) has developed the concept of 'habitus' - 'a power of adaptation' - as a way of understanding individuals as a complex amalgam of their past and present but an amalgam that is always in the process of completion and so open to change. Habitus operates at the sub-conscious level and so is beyond the reach of introspective scrutiny or control by the will but, Bourdieu argues, 'is no more fixed than the practices which it helps to structure' (1984: 466).
This conceptual tool is a helpful way of examining the experiences of these students to see the role that educational institutions play in both changing and reproducing social and cultural inequalities from one generation to the next.
Different groups have different views of educational institutions, depending on their relationship to the dominant group. These students, who all come from families with no history of attending any form of post school education and who live in socio-economically excluded geographical areas, are likely to share assumptions about the lack of opportunities available to them in the education sector (Ball, 1993). Moreover, in telling stories of their educational experiences they will be constructing an identity and, simultaneously, constructing and presenting a sense of self (see Kehily, 1995: 29).
In order to see how this group made sense of their gendered and classed experiences I will look at three themes: their post school learning experiences; their views about higher education; their attitudes to being working class. I have chosen these themes both because they emerged from the interview data and also because they have been identified as significant in the literature (McGivney, 1990; Reay and Ball, 1997).
Post school learning experiences
Although all of the 17 interviewees described their experience of school negatively they were able to give positive examples of learning that had taken place at a later point in their lives. These experiences for the men tended to be through institutionalised community activities. For example: 'Learning for me took place through Trade Union and Labour Politics and through working at the grassroots with the tenants' movement.'(A. M, 37, white). 'What I've learnt since school has been through being involved in campaigns especially the one to keep the Accident and Emergency Department open at our local hospital. (P. M, 38, white). For the women it was much more related to their personal experiences. For example: 'I'd fallen pregnant at 17, got married and then stayed at home. I was really bored and I wanted to prove I could do something for my daughters and myself so I went to the Further Education College. My husband didn't like it so I stopped studying because he convinced me I was neglecting him and the kids.
Then we split up and I got involved with the local women's group and working with them taught me how to get my confidence back' (K. F, 26, white). 'I ended up meeting a group of black women that were beginning to challenge things I was able to connect to my experience so I learnt something that's always stayed with me' (Z. F, 24, Black).
For all the interviewees their stories recognise and validate the knowledge that grows out of their life experiences. They also show how individual behaviouri s mediated through gendered ways of viewing and describing their worlds.
For some students their later learning and life experiences changed the way they thought about themselves but again these were gendered with the females tending to relate experiences which were about their family life whilst the men emphasised their relationships with their friends.
For example: 'My husband desperately wanted a family but I didn't. Eventually I gave in but once our son was two years old he left. That made me learn to be a stronger person on my own because I had to stand on my own feet' (T. F, 36, white). In contrast the men said: 'I was taken to court after a fight in a pub. I was innocent but the bouncer said it was me. I couldn't grass on my mates so I just accepted the fine.
I learnt from that that it's easy to get labelled and I've never forgotten it.' (N. M, 44, white). 'Real learning for me was when I went on a Youth Exchange to Italy. I'd never left Scotland before and it was meeting a whole lot of great people and finding we could communicate (S. M, 23, Black).
The stories that the interviewees told were differentiated in these ways regardless of the person's marital or parental status and show the contrasting focus of the two genders in the way they described their experiences. This finding is confirmed by other research, for example, 'gender differences emerge in the emphasis placed on the domestic domain by the female students as compared with the male students' (MacDonald and Stratta, 1998:76).
Views about higher education
When the students were asked who they thought higher education was for, and why they had not themselves previously participated in it, they generally gave structural reasons. For example, 'I think that Higher Education works well for people who have got the money or the status and because of that they are able to make the time to do what they want to do' '(A. F, 31, Black). The explanations as to why they did not have 'the money or status' were different, however, with women prioritising gender and men class.
For example: 'In our community girls didn't go into further education because they were going to get married and have children' (D. F, 45, white); in contrast to 'You need the support to get through all the barriers that exist for the working class to get an education' (S. M, 23, Black).These students, then, showed their awareness of the structural inequalities that impeded their journey towards becoming university students, rather than seeing their nonparticipation as solely the result of a personal lack of ability (see also Green and Webb, 1997).
Yet, inevitably, their awareness of who could and couldn't enter HE demonstrated they were positioned as outsiders and continued to construct themselves in this way. As one student put it, 'People from my area don't go to university' (D. F, 45, white). However, as their confidence grew about gaining an academic qualification so their attitudes to HE changed. 'LAST is great because it provides the support to keep you believing that you can do it, both through the tutors and through all the financial support for childcare, transport and so on.' (R. F, 41, white, disabled). In addition, an important theme of the course was the development of awareness of how working class people are excluded from education by focusing on the ways in which access to education is socially and economically structured. This approach enabled the students to identify their own experiences of exclusion as a positive contribution to their studies.
Once these students had successfully completed their first year having the time and the permission to participate in HE seemed difficult, but perhaps ultimately attainable, although the difference having a degree would make was once again gendered. For example: 'I want to be my own person at the end of this' (F. F, 28, white) in contrast to - 'I'm here to get the professional qualification' (N. M, 44, white). Other findings show that for women it is often the 'growing independence of children that provides a space for mothers to concentrate on their own education ...[whilst] redundancy and unemployment were more likely to act as triggers for men' (Webb et al, 1994, 210-211). In the case of these students, however, child-care costs were met from the projects 'funds and all the participants had part-time paid employment. This means that the material circumstances of the students were similar but their orientations were gendered being much more instrumental for the men whilst the females had less specific ambitions.
Another difference was that the female students brought their domestic lives into the university whilst the males kept the domestic and personal separate from institutional and academic demands. For example, the women said: 'I'm always spinning plates so whenever the kids are ill then everything falls apart' (Z. F, 24, Black). 'I just don't have a place to work. I had to move back into my mum's house and she's only got the one spare bedroom so I'm sharing that with the two kids' (P. F, 25, white). References to their children and home life were absent from the males' accounts of their lives although they clearly felt the same pressures on their time. 'Just not having enough time for things is the major drawback. I don't have time to potter about in the library which means that you have to focus on the actual work rather than being able to look at wider issues' (A. M, 37, white). Similar gendered differences were reported on by Edwards (1993) in her study of mature women students and she also showed that the juggling of demands between home and study impacted on female students much more strongly than males.
Attitudes to class
These students all come from communities where not being middle class was valued and where very careful monitoring for pretensions took place. Students were very concerned that they were still seen as being part of their own communities despite their being in HE - 'I don't want to be seen as a wee swot' (S.F, 39, white); 'I'm still rooted in my community' (A. M, 37, white). It is not surprising that, in contrast to the students' descriptions of their other experiences, their attitudes to being working class did not appear to be differentiated along gendered lines with the whole group seeing their class position as an important resource. For example: 'I'm working class and proud of it' (A. M, 37, white). 'My life is richer where I am than it would be elsewhere so I'm not intimidated by all these middle class people' (D. F, 45, white). To be a member of the working class, however, has material implications and for this group economic survival was clearly important. Here there were gendered responses to what this meant. For example, 'I want security for my kids and independence' (L. F, 29, white),'I want to do my own thing' (J. F, 26, white) from the women contrasted with; 'I want a professional's salary' (B. M, 42, white); 'I want to a permanent full-time job back in my own community' (N. M, 44, white) from the men. So, although the students articulated an identity framed by class and gender, they had expectations about their own futures and for most of them this meant greater financial security.
The focus, however, tended to be more towards the family and their personal development for the women and more focused on gaining employment for the men. Again then, the interviewees' understanding of their identity was premised on their past and present experience as mediated through the lens of gender.