Mature Women Students

Separating Of Connecting Family And Education

Rosalind Edwards, Rosalind Edwards South Bank University.

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781135749927
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 1993. At a time when more mature women are encouraged to enter higher education, this book investigates the effects that being a student has on women's family and social relationships. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, Mature Women Students draws on in-depth interviews with women of different ethnic backgrounds and social classes -all mothers and in long-term relationships with a man. The result is a comprehensive picture of the shifting patterns of the women's lives at various stages of social science degree-level study. This picture reveals, amongst other things, that the public and private spheres of education and family are not separate entities; they interact and impinge, with particular implications for the position of women within each sphere. This accessible and challenging book illuminates an important and growing issue in women's lives and in society.

Chapter 1
The Political and the Personal

It is a common-place wisdom that gaining an education affects women's positions in the 'public' world (particularly in the area of paid work) and within the 'private' family sphere (especially in their personal relationships with men they may live with). This assumption is not only so for many academics; it is also held in the public mind generally, especially with regard to the latter sphere. The headline to an article in a popular daily newspaper reporting on aspects of the research that formed the basis for this book, conjured up the obviously instantly accessible imagery of the film Educating Rita: 'Educating real life Ritas "can lead to marriage break-ups".' What is it about gaining a higher education that means it is viewed as so potentially disruptive to relationships between women and the men with whom they live? Annette Lawson points us towards an explanation when she argues:

Education has the power to change people in fundamental ways . ., power is the clue. People with traditional backgrounds feel it unnatural that wives should be more independent, more capable, more educated than their husbands. It reverses long-accepted understandings of the proper place for each to occupy. This reversal becomes confusing and threatening (1990, pp. 187-88; her emphasis).

However, popular assumption and lived reality do not always bear each other out. Moreover, not all those writing on education view it as undermining social power relationships, but rather as reinforcing them.

Educating Women for Equality or Subordination?

In the sense that it has been seen as an instrument for and of power, education may be deemed political. Education has been viewed as offering a way out of inequality and oppression both by and for groups who are powerless. For women in particular, education has been looked to by some as an escape route from domestic life and second-class citizenship into the public sphere. Many nineteenth century feminists, both white and black, focused on education, and entry to higher education in particular, as fulfilling a right to intellectual development and the need for better employment opportunities (Banks, 1981; Hooks, 1982). The fight for admission to universities was based for at least some on the premise that education would give (middle-class) women the opportunity of access to the public world of the professions and to economic independence (Purvis, 1991). Similarly, in the 1960s, Betty Friedan, at the beginning of the second wave of feminism, saw 'serious' higher education for women as the 'key to the problem that has no name' (Friedan, 1965, p. 362) which she had identified; the isolation and dissatisfaction of suburban housewives completely immersed in the private sphere and their wifing and mothering roles:

The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and can continue to save, American women from the greater dangers of the feminine mystique (Friedan, 1965, p. 357).

Juliet Mitchell (1971) and Janet Chafetz (1989) have pointed to the role that the expansion of higher education in the 1960s played in the growth of feminism.¹ Black feminists (Bryan, Dadzie and Scafe, 1985) have shown black people's, particularly black women's, belief in education as both a way out of poverty and exploitation and as necessary for them to achieve anything in the face of racial discrimination.

Feminists have also voiced concern over women's continuing relatively poor access to the higher levels of educational institutions and their poor representation in the prestige subjects, with the underlying assumption still being that women can use education as a bridge to a more secure place in public life. Eileen Byrne has charted the inequalities for women in higher education, and education generally, and believes that 'only the fullest educational opportunity' (Byrne, 1978, p. 12) — that is, access to the same education as men — is the key to women's freedom of status, career and personal fulfilment. She calls for the redirection of resources in education towards this end. Tessa Blackstone has argued that women will remain a disadvantaged group so long as their education is restricted, and that 'better educated women are more likely to be politically active, to be employed, to believe in sex equality' (Blackstone, 1976, p. 200). Margaret Stacey and Marion Price state that:

Education has been one of the few resources that women have been able to use to free themselves from the constraints of the traditional role. Providing both sexes with routes for upward mobility in a changing society, education has made it possible for women to stand alongside and against men in the public political arena (1981, p. 173).

They see women seeking positions of power in the public world of politics and work as the way forward for women who want changes in society.

Moreover, education has also been seen not just as a way of combating inequalities in the public world of paid work and politics for all groups, but also as affecting the 'private' but 'political' personal relationships between men and women. Olive Banks (1981) maintains that many of the nineteenth-century feminists who advocated higher education for women as a means of improving and diversifying their position in the public world of paid work also felt it would enhance and elevate relationships between middle-class women and husbands in the home. Allowing women to become intellectual equals with their husbands would undermine the pettiness of domestic life and prepare them more effectively for the role as wife and mother. Banks states that few nineteenth-century feminists actually wanted to challenge the fundamentals of the marital relationship itself. Carol Dyhouse has taken issue with this view, to argue that:

Almost all feminists wanted to see change in certain areas, and their criticism of existing patterns of family life was particularly likely to focus around issues of economic and domestic organisation, and in the area of marital and sexual relationships (1989, p. 185).

She goes on to say, however, that there was not always unity in this critique, with divisions of social class and political allegiance.

Later, in the 1960s, though, a strand of thought that regarded higher education as enhancing women's roles as intelligent companions for men and for their future role as mothers responsible for their children's development was still apparent. In advocating women's entry to the public world via education, for example, Friedan had not envisaged any changes in the private sphere. Nevertheless, higher education for women is usually now regarded by many feminists and others as an important factor leading to greater equality in the personal relationships between men and women in the private sphere. Lee Comer (1982) has argued that wives gain power in marital relationships by having more education than their husbands and by being equally or more involved in organizations outside the home. Stacey and Price cite studies (such as the one by Pleck, 1985) which show that highly educated women have a greater influence in the public sphere and that this increases their power within the family. The shift in the balance of power between men and women is regarded as coming about because gaining an education changes women's opportunities, expectations and self-conceptions. Rose Coser (1974) suggests education, in allowing the chance of a career, will lead women to reassess their position when they realize there are realistic chances of achieving a more equal status with their husbands. David Morgan feels that education, and especially higher education, may cause 'some women to pause and examine, quizzically, their own marriages or relationships' (Morgan, 1985, p. 94). He goes on to say that, collectively, the: '. . . changes in roles and statuses of women in education and work can be seen as having some kind of cumulative effect on relationships within the family' (1985, p. 96).

Nevertheless, Morgan does caution that the processes by which this change takes place are not straightforward. The vast majority of those who have advocated education as an important step forward in changing both women's public and private relations have acknowledged that education is not sufficient in itself and that other changes are necessary too. Rosemary Deem (1978), for example, maintains that 'the connections between knowledge and action are rarely as close as either reformers or revolutionaries sometimes think they are' (p. 138), and that it is possible for women who have received higher education to enter into traditionally feminine paid work or to treat their jobs as less important than a man would.

However, over the last twenty years, some feminists have produced critiques of education, including higher education, which argue that the educational system and the knowledge that is promulgated within it, far from leading to potential equality between men and women, merely maintain notions of women's 'proper' place and women's work. Therefore, as it stands, education cannot bring about change. They have looked back at the energy that women put into gaining entry to higher education — to the source of gaining power it was thought to embody — and questioned why, for example, women are no closer to being full members of the educational elite that sets agendas and priorities than they were 150 years ago:

. . . women have never participated fully in the decision-making processes of the educational world. As in all other spheres of public life, where the power is women are absent (Dale and Foster, 1986, p. 66).

Dale Spender believes that education is still 'a political weapon' used against women (Spender, 1985, p. 180). Spender and others have propounded a view of education as flawed and biased, rather than the benign, neutral, value-free system it claims to be, because, they say, most of what we know has been constructed by white men (Bryan, Dadzie and Scafe, 1985; Spender, 1982; Belenky et al., 1986). Jane Thompson (1983) states that while it has been assumed that access to higher education for women is the issue, if the only education is 'men's education', equal access will not alter the basic relationship between men and women. She and other feminists contend that the knowledge taught in higher education and the education system itself explains and legitimates, reflects and reinforces patriarchal, middle-class and white norms and values. Certainly, in Britain, the Department of Education includes among the 'aims and purposes of higher education' the 'transmission of a common culture' (DES, 1987, p. 1). For many feminists and others this common culture is one that is particularly slanted in the way described above.

Higher education, according to such critiques, will teach women only more about subordination, unless there are profound changes both within the institutions and within society. Miriam David (1986) argues that while governments may at some time have been committed to equality of educational opportunity between the sexes as a means of improving paid work opportunities, none has been committed to transforming their responsibilities within the private family sphere, either through education or by any other means. Education and the family, she says, jointly act to reproduce gendered identities, materially and ideologically (David, 1980). This is further compounded by changes in the view of the nature of education as a vehicle for social change. Notions of education as creating forms of social equality and social cohesion are coming to be replaced by those of individualism and competitiveness in the educational and other marketplaces (David, 1989).

For some, all of this leads to a disenchantment with education as a way out of inequality and oppression for women from different classes and races. Spender quotes Adrienne Rich on the matter: 'a woman's integrity is likely to be undermined by the process of university education' (Spender, 1985, p. 186). However, Janet Finch (1984), Gillian Pascall (1986) and others see education as contradictory and contested ground, with both opportunity for liberation and reproduction of subordination existing side by side. Pascall warns against drawing simplistic conclusions with regard to education's role in the expunging or reinforcement of inequalities. While education is an important means of transmitting dominant ideologies it also constitutes an important resource for social movement. Thompson (1983), despite her criticisms of higher education, feels that it does at least improve the chances for women competing in the male world of work. Sandra Acker, too, hopes that, in spite of higher education's integral part in reproducing an unequal and hierarchical society, 'a little learning will deepen discontent — and ultimately be a dangerous thing' (1984, p. 30), while Sylvia Walby feels that 'during the twentieth century, education has been the least patriarchal institution' (1990, p. 108).

Others also have faith that if a feminist perspective is incorporated into higher education, particularly via Women's Studies, then education will play an important part in the transformation of human relationships and of society. Gloria Bowles writes of how she and other feminists in academe have: '. . . a basic belief in the potential power of the university, in the value of education for enriching individual lives and for improving society' (1983, p. 38), and Madeleine Arnot is optimistic that 'wherever women are found, the messages of the women's movement seem to take root and grow, whatever the political top soil' (1985, p. 123). Deem (1983), too, has postulated that where women's own experiences, problems and social position have some influence on the educational context it does meet a real need among women and can offer them a positive experience. Indeed, women academics have been successful, at least to some extent, in introducing feminist perspectives into teaching in many countries, especially in the area of social sciences (Maynard, 1990; Lie, 1990). Moreover, the profile of students studying within higher education is changing. Non-traditional students, particularly mature and/or black and working-class women, are being encouraged into higher education.

Wanted: Women — Mature, Working-class, and/or from Minority Ethnic Groups

Demographic trends mean there is, and will be for some time, a shortage of conventionally qualified 18-year-old students to enter full-time higher education in many Western countries. Both governments and education institutions are looking to other than traditional sources of students to fill places on degree courses. In Britain and the United States, for example, widening access to higher education for mature students, women, the working-class and those from minority ethnic groups has been laid down as a major aim (Department of Education and Science, 1987; HM Inspectorate, 1991, Appendix V). The development of specific routes into higher education for mature students has occurred in many countries. Colleges and universities in the US have developed 'gateway' or 'bridging' courses (HM Inspectorate, 1991). In Britain and several other European countries there are 'Access' courses that direct their mature participants towards higher education, and/or institutions of higher education themselves have special entrance examinations (Commission of European Communities, 1991).

Although Arlene McLaren (1985) found that as women increased their investment in education in the 1970s the economic situation worsened — a situation that is repeating itself — mature women seem to be responding to the call for their increased participation in higher education. There has been a rise in the number of full-time mature students entering higher education in many countries, with the number of female mature students at all levels and all modes of study often increasing at a faster rate than that of men. In Britain, for example, the figures show that between 1979 and 1988 there was a 37 per cent increase in full-time mature students (part-time numbers increasing more sharply), with the proportion of women rising steadily from 41 per cent in 1979 to 48 per cent in 1988 (Department of Education and Science, 1991). In the US, women and older students now comprise 53 per cent and 39 per cent of enrolments respectively (US Department of Education, 1988), with the mature student trend increasing sharply.

Despite governments' stated desire to expand the numbers in higher education many have, at the same time, introduced student loans and/or imposed severe restrictions upon the sector's public funding. Pressures on finance have, however, led to cuts in 'non-essential' areas of provision which affect women, such as day nurseries in institutions, and in areas of study that also particularly affect women. Those disciplines and courses, such as the physical sciences, which readily admit quantification and produce 'hard' facts are attracting resources while more philosophically-based subjects, such as social sciences and humanities, are becoming marginalized (David, 1989). Education and social science subjects are the 'choice' of the majority of all mature students, but especially of mature women (for example, Department of Education and Science, 1991).

David predicts that all these factors will mean 'a return to a more uniform system of relatively privileged access to higher education' (1989, p. 175). At present, though, the main aim of the push to widen access on the part of governments and/or institutions seems to be to boost the numbers from under-represented groups in higher education.² They are, however, most often concerned with 'how many' as an indicator of equal opportunities in access to higher education and not with the power aspects of inequalities in the qualitative experiences of women in general and women from different races and classes, once admitted as students to the institutions. Little attention has been paid to aspects such as discrimination and harassment, curriculum review and the overall institutional ethos. Governments and institutions have largely abrogated responsibility for the experiences of under-represented groups once they have succeeded in gaining access. In Britain, the Commission for Racial Equality has noted that:

It is necessary to ask what inequalities there are in the experiences of groups, once admitted as students. If the qualitative experience of different groups are the subject of policy proposals, then very different forms of monitoring are necessary . . . this would require the collection of a range of data on course satisfaction, academic progression and success, perceptions of treatment by staff and peers, key curricular foci, incidents and trauma etc. (Williams et al., 1989, p. 21).

The American Council on Education's Office of Minorities in Education has also made similar points. Clare Ungerson has remarked with regard to women students particularly:

For women of all social classes to be further libera...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Advisory Editorial Board
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 The Political and the Personal
• Chapter 2 Separating and Connecting Public and Private Worlds
• Chapter 3 Family and Education: Meanings in Childhood and Adulthood
• Chapter 4 'Greedy Institutions': Straddling the Worlds of Family and Education
• Chapter 5 Women and Family Life in the Academic and Public World
• Chapter 6 Power, Interest and Support: The Effects of Education on the Women's Family Lives
• Chapter 7 Ways of Being
• Chapter 8 Equality in Different Worlds?
• Appendix: The Women Interviewed
• References
• Index