عنوان

Girls and career choice in England in the late 1950s :

TLets394290

Girls and career choice in England in the late 1950s :

[Thesis]

Spencer, Stephanie Moira

constructions of the female role

Goodman, Joyce ; Watts, Ruth

University of Southampton

2001

Ph.D.

University of Southampton

2001

This thesis draws together a wide variety of sources in order to explore the way inwhich the adult female role was presented, and may have influenced, girls makingtheir school leaving career decisions in England in the late 1950s. Career isunderstood throughout the thesis to include periods of domesticity as well as periodsof full-time and part-time paid employment. The thesis uses Morwenna Griffiths'Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity (1995) as a theoretical framework ofanalysis. The metaphor of the web is employed to tease out the contradictions andambivalence inherent in expectations of women's adult lives. Themes consideredwithin the analysis of the different chapters are: the gendered nature of autonomy andindependence; notions of women's citizenship in the emergent welfare state; therelationship between constructions of a universal Woman and individual women; andwomen's membership of different, yet overlapping, communities.Each chapter focuses on a different area of the web of identity using a number ofsources. The first archival chapter focuses on the foundation of the welfare state usingthe Beveridge Report and evidence submitted to the Interdepartmental Committee onSocial Insurance and the Allied Services by women's organisations. It considersalternative proposals by the Women's Freedom League and the reaction of thegeneral public through the records of the Mass Observation Archive. This is followedby a consideration of employment advice offered in manuals, career novels andWomen IS Employment. A chapter on educational sources initially considers 1950ssociological and educational research before turning to the records of the Associationof Headmistresses and the Association of Assistant Mistresses to explore theirexpectations of school leavers. It also considers material submitted to the CrowtherCommittee for their Report in 1959 on educational provision from 15-18. In chapterfive, constructions of the adult female role presented in Woman, Housewife and Girlare explored in relation to their construction of a female community and attitudes topaid employment. The thesis concludes with a discussion of twenty three interviewswith women who left school between 1956 and 1960 between the ages of fifteen andeighteen.In drawing together this diversity of material the thesis demonstrates that the end ofthe 1950s was a period when attitudes towards the relationship of women todomesticity and paid work were marked in their complexity rather than in theirconsensus. It highlights the necessity of exploring both constructions of 'woman' as aunitary subject and the experiences of individuals in a historical evaluation ofwomen's role in late 1950s England.

Spencer, Stephanie Moira

Goodman, Joyce

Watts, Ruth

University of Southampton

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y