Table Of ContentWOMEN’S CONTEMPORARY LIVES
As increasing numbers of women return to work or education after starting
or raising a family, it can no longer be assumed that education, employment
and the family is a defining progression for women in the Western world.
Women’s Contemporary Lives questions notions of success and equality as they
are measured for women in and across the interconnected domains of work,
education and family. Christina Hughes asks whether equal opportunity
feminism is promising the impossible, and questions those who suggest that
women’s high achievement in education and the workplace means that there
is no longer a need for feminism in social policy.
Exploring how age, class, race and sexuality have influenced and continue
to influence women’s expectations and assessments, Women’s contemporary Lives
points to a feminist agenda for social change based on a more inclusive and
fluid interpretation of female subjectivity.
Dr Christine Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Continuing
Education, University of Warwick. She was previously co-editor of Gender and
Education and currently serves on its editorial board. She is also assistant
editor of Gender, Work and Organisation.
WOMEN’S
CONTEMPORARY LIVES
Within and beyond the mirror
Christina Hughes
London and New York
First published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2002 Christina Hughes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested
ISBN 0-203-45161-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-45723-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-23973-7 (hbk) 0-415-23974-5 (pbk)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 Gazing in the mirror 11
2 Women have made it31
3 The best of both worlds 50
4 Women are caring 72
5 Having it all 94
6 Doing it all 113
7 Within and beyond the mirror 131
References 150
Index 162
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has been a long time in the writing, and it would never have been
completed without the support and help from some dear colleagues and
friends. In particular, I want to thank Lynn Clouder, Jane McKie, Jane Martin,
Carrie Paechter and Arwen Raddon for taking the time in what I know are
their very busy schedules to look through and comment so helpfully on earlier
drafts. I also have to thank Loraine Blaxter not only for undertaking this
same job, but also for being at the end of the telephone on those frequent
occasions when I needed to sound out ideas. Indeed, I count myself fortunate
to have had such a stimulating colleague and friend who took such an interest
in the work I was undertaking. Finally, I have to thank my partner, Malcolm
Tight, who walked the dog, made the dinner, read all my drafts, corrected my
spelling, kept telling me I was going to finish and has been the rock at my
side. What would I have done without you? Thank you all.
All errors, omissions, misreadings and so forth are, of course, my very own.
Christina Hughes
September 2001
INTRODUCTION
What’s it about?
‘What’s it about?’ my daughter asks as she enters the room half-way through
a television programme. ‘What’s it about?’ my colleagues enquire politely
when they discover I am in the middle of writing this book. ‘What’s it about?’
I say to a student who tells me she has decided on the topic for her dissertation.
‘What’s it about?’ is not an invitation to supply a long and detailed
exposition. My daughter does not want to know the aesthetics of the
characterisation as they are played out through the twists and turns of the
plot. My colleagues are not seeking a line-by-line, sentence-by-sentence or
even chapter-by-chapter description. I do not want my student to tell me the
life story of globalisation or empowerment or whatever is the topic of her
dissertation. To do any of these things would be turgid in the extreme.
When we say ‘What’s it about?’ we do not mean this literally in terms of
‘What’s it all about?’ Rather the question is posed in a social context in which
common phrases such as this carry particular sorts of meaning. When we ask
‘What’s it about?’ we are seeking a brief, accessible summary. We want the
reply to reveal the main story, the most salient points, an overview, a thumbnail
sketch.
A simple question, then, carries meaning beyond which a literal
translation of the words would suggest. This meaning is context-
specific. In this case, we are all in a hurry.
But, of course, we do not always get what we want or we expect. Instead, I
reply to my daughter in terms of the relationship of the plot to wider social
issues. I respond to my colleagues’ kind enquiries by detailing how Chapter 6
is now part of Chapter 4, Chapter 3 has twelve key points and the conclusion
draws on a breadth of scholarship that would fill twelve libraries. And my
student begins by explaining the history of globalisation or empowerment or
whatever and concludes by illustrating how her research will encompass
several key theories in sociology, psychology and economics.
Thus, we cannot guarantee how each of us will take up these
1
INTRODUCTION
meanings. In this way, meanings are not fixed. Sometimes we get
the succinct summary. Sometimes we get the long version.
More problematically, we may decide to resist the expected response. When
my colleagues ask me about my new book, I know that they are seeking a
quick, brief reply. But, I think of myself as a scholar who has invested a good
deal of myself in the project. Or, in the face of time-poor environments, I
may have a commitment to creating developmental space for individuals. In
either case I am impelled to go into great detail. It is cathartic for me. It is
annoying for them.
How we respond to intended meanings is related to a sense of our identity
and our political intentions. The long reply allows me to become, in those
moments, the committed scholar. Or it allows me to redress the rush and
hurry of academic life.
‘What’s it about?’
Origins and aims
The origins of this text lie in my research experiences as an academic and in
an observation. My research has been focused in three areas: education,
employment and family. This research has often been undertaken in separate
phases, and in many ways this replicates ideas of these areas as distinct fields
of scholarship. For example, there are innumerable texts that are concerned
with women and education, women and employment or women and family.
Nevertheless, demographic changes indicate how education, employment and
family no longer constitute a simple linearity in women’s lives. Increasing
numbers of women form part of the paid labour force and combine family
and employment. Women are also taking opportunities to return to education
after the birth of their children.
There is no doubt that there is a range of excellent texts that offer analyses
of the combination of two of these spheres. For example, there are texts that
are concerned with the family–work nexus or the relations between education
and employment. Similarly, there are also excellent texts that offer overviews
of feminist research in a variety of key domains relevant to the analysis of
women’s contemporary lives (see, for example, Pascall, 1997; Pilcher, 1999).
However, these texts do not offer the reader a synthesis of these domains in
terms of a unifying framework that builds on feminist theory and debate. As
a result, they maintain an academic separation of spheres that much feminist
research has challenged and sought to overcome.
For those who are more interested in feminist theory there are, again, a
number of excellent sources (see, for example, Tong, 1989; Clough, 1994;
Evans, 1995; Brooks; 1997; Beasley, 1999; Freedman, 2001). In their primary
focus on theory, these texts provide overviews of feminist positions and
debates. Nonetheless, such texts do not relate these debates to more general
2
INTRODUCTION
feminist empirical research. In consequence, another form of separation is
enacted. This is the separation of the more status-defined field of theorising
from that of the less status-rich field of empiricism.
These observations of my own research experiences and the mirroring of
these in terms of the development of academic publications led me to
conceptualise this text in terms of the following two aims:
• to present an analysis of women’s lives in contemporary Western societies
that connects, rather than separates, the domains of education,
employment and family;
• simultaneously to use this analysis to illuminate key feminist debates.
In this I believe that the text that I offer here is original. Nevertheless, a
further problem remained. This relates to finding a framework that will not
only hold theory and empirical research together within each chapter but
also across the entire text. With some similarity to Skeggs (1997: 24) my
search for a suitable framework has been lengthy and problematic as ‘I moved
through many theories’. My choice of the post-structural illustrates not only
my growing understanding of how this offers a rich perspective of complex
and contradictory phenomena but also how such approaches facilitate a
‘feminist autocritique’ (Stanley and Wise, 2000: 261) of the meta-narratives
and universal truths of feminism.
Deconstructing the everyday
The meanings conveyed through simple phrases lie at the heart of this book.
As the chapter contents indicate, these phrases are some of those commonly
used to describe and generalise women’s lives in contemporary Western
societies. ‘Women have made it’, for example, conveys the idea of equality
between women and men. Women are reaching the tops of career ladders
and doing well in education. ‘Best of both worlds’ highlights the dilemmas
involved in that equality when women still want to be mothers but also desire
careers in paid employment. ‘Women are caring’ brings us to those ideas
that women have innate nurturative qualities. ‘Having it all’ suggests that
women can achieve all their dreams. ‘Doing it all’ implies that there are
costs to that achievement.
In considering the meanings attached to particular phrases, I am making
a distinction between two meanings of the term discourse. On the one hand,
we can understand the term discourse as a string of, potentially innocent,
words. On the other hand, as I shall illustrate here briefly using the phrase
‘Women have made it’, we can understand discourse to mean a way of being
in the world which shapes who and what we are (see Gee, 1997, for a discussion
of this kind of distinction).
‘Making it’ has a particular resonance in terms of goal achievement. I’ve
3
