Women of Their Time: Generation, Gender Issues and Feminism

Jane Pilcher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351871877
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book argues for the importance of age as a source of diversity and difference amongst women. It compares three generations of women's accounts of a range of gender issues, including the domestic division of labour, equality, abortion and sexuality. It also compares their understandings of and orientations toward the feminist movement. Drawing on Karl Mannheim's argument that an individual's location in historical time shapes their social outlooks or world views, it is shown that women of different ages do not share the same gendered life courses due to differing cohort memberships. Consequently, women of different ages interpret, define and give meaning to gender issues and to feminism in varied and contrasting ways. A key concern of the book is to show that findings from qualitative studies are an important supplement to surveys of cohort differences in women's gender attitudes, in that they are more revealing of the complex ways cohort influences the construction of gender issues, including the very language used to do so.

1. Gender, generation and world views

In Britain during the first three decades of the twentieth century, women struggled to obtain the vote and in 1928, finally won this key right of citizenship on the same terms as men. In Britain during the last three decades of the twentieth century, a woman became the leader of a major political party and later, Prime Minister. In the 1997 General Election, 120 women were elected as Members of Parliament, considerably more than ever before. Between the beginning of the century and its end, fundamental change has clearly occurred in women’s participation in formal politics. Further, the shift from lacking the vote to holding office as Prime Minister is indicative of profound change in women’s position and status elsewhere in society, including in opportunities for education and employment. There are few who would deny the key role feminism has played in bringing about this transformation.

The pace and widespread nature of change in women’s status during the twentieth century means that, throughout their lives, older and younger women have experienced significantly different opportunities and constraints. As Walby explains, women of different birth cohorts have faced contrasting ‘gendered opportunity structures’, with dissimilar sets of options and resources, disadvantages and vulnerabilities. Consequently, women of different birth cohorts are likely to have ‘different values and moralities, different political agendas and priorities’ (1997: 11), not least with regard to gender issues and to feminism itself. British social scientific data on women’s responses to feminism is lacking but a range of evidence on gender role attitudes in Britain and elsewhere does show that younger women are more liberal and egalitarian than older women (for example, Bell and Schwede 1985; Harding 1988; Misra and Panigrahi 1995; Roper and Labeff 1977; Scott et al 1996; Slevin and Ray Wingrove 1983; Thornton et al 1983; Witherspoon 1985).

Studies on cohort variation in attitudes to gender roles have generally been conducted via surveys, and hence with a quantitative research design. The survey approach has a number of distinct advantages as a method of examining the significance of cohort. It allows claims of representativeness and generalisability of findings, and often includes the examination of the correlation between cohort-age and other variables, including marital and employment status. The survey approach also facilitates cross-national comparisons (for example, Scott et al 1996) and thereby the development of explanations of changes in gender attitudes and behaviour over time and between cultures. Whilst surveys make these important contributions through providing, say, data on the proportions of each cohort ‘agreeing’ or ‘disagreeing’ with a particular questionnaire item, they are not designed to explore the equally interesting question of differences in the ways agreement or disagreement may be expressed according to cohort. Surveys give data on the ‘final product’ (the ‘attitude’) but can tell us little about how that product was formulated. Arguably, pre-coded responses ‘do violence’ to the richness and variety of what might otherwise be said on a particular issue. In contrast, qualitative studies, through allowing interviewees to answer in their own words, do allow a detailed examination of the vocabulary used to report responses to gender issues and an exploration of the ways in which this may vary by cohort. However, cohort studies of women’s gender role attitudes using a qualitative research design remain rare. Consequently, although we know from surveys that patterns of agreement and disagreement on the issue of, say, traditional gender roles show marked differences by cohort, we have little sense of the ‘reasoning’, particularly in relation to gender, that results in the reported disagreement or agreement.

This book aims to fill in some of these gaps in knowledge, through examining accounts of gender issues and of feminism given by three cohorts of women in response to open-ended interview questions. In the chapters that follow, comparisons are made between the women’s accounts of a range of issues which the feminist movement has advanced, including housework and the domestic division of labour, paid work and participation in public life, sexuality and reproduction, and the cultural representation of women’s bodies. The comparison between the cohorts of women is extended to include an examination of their contrasting understandings of and orientations toward the organised women’s movement. A key concern of this book is to show that findings from qualitative studies are an important supplement to surveys of cohort differences in women’s gender role attitudes. Whilst surveys can claim representativeness and other advantages, my argument is that qualitative studies are better placed to reveal the varied and complex ways in which women of different cohorts construct gender issues and the influence cohort has on the very language they use to do so. Following on from this, and in the light of findings presented in this book, a further concern is to emphasise the importance of age as a source of diversity and difference amongst women, alongside the more widely recognised social divisions of class and ethnicity. In addition to extending sociological understanding of the ways age, via cohort, divides women and fragments their gendered experiences, the book also argues that women’s accounts of gender issues and the organised women’s movement are of interest and importance in their own right. Whilst there is a range of literature documenting the reflections of feminist activists on the recent history and nature of feminism (for example, Neustatter 1990; Rowland 1984; Wandor 1990), there is little evidence on the interpretations and understandings other women have of one of the most important forces of social and political change of the twentieth century. Feminism aims to change how women are perceived, but we know surprisingly little about the ways women themselves perceive feminism. Evidence on women’s understandings and conceptions of gender issues and of feminism, such as presented in this book, therefore represents a valuable contribution to the debate over the status and achievements of feminism in the late twentieth century.

The study described in this book straddles several areas of sociological concern, including the saliency of gender in everyday life, the diversity of gendered identities, the nature and process of social change, the social determination of knowledge, values and beliefs, and the social significance of age. It is the latter two areas, the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of age, however, which especially shaped the conduct of the study. The remainder of this introductory chapter details the theoretical and methodological strategies followed in the study. Karl Mannheim’s (1952; 1960) account of the way knowledge is determined by location in socio-historical time is discussed, including in terms of the conceptual and methodological difficulties which arise when this theory is employed in empirical settings. Of particular concern here are the entangling of age, period and cohort effects, the determination of what counts as knowledge in empirical terms, and how knowledge can be connected with socio-historical factors. Other issues considered are representativeness of the sample, generalisability of findings, and age and gender dynamics in the research setting.

Age and world views

In everyday language, the notion of a generation is commonly used as an explanation of differences in experiences and outlooks between older and younger people in society. The idea of a ‘generation gap’, for example, assumes clear distinctions between age groups who have grown to adulthood at different periods of historical time. In a similar way, generation is often used as a measure or marker of social change, so that a person might say ‘Oh that would never have been the case a few generations ago’, or ‘My grandchildren’s generation will expect something different from life’. Both of these everyday, popular uses of generation rest upon an assumption that the experiences and outlooks of age groups are likely to be dissimilar and, further, that such dissimilarities are understandable by reference to the different ‘locations’ of age groups in time. In sociology, similar links are made between a person’s location in an historical social structure and their views or conceptions of the social world, via the concept of cohort. Sociologically, cohort contextualises the lives of individuals; first, within the specific interval of historical time into which they are born, grow up and old; and, second, within the company of their coevals (other individuals of the same, or similar, calendar age). As a consequence of their cohort’s location in historical time, individuals and their coevals share an exposure to certain experiences and opportunities and are excluded from others.

As noted earlier, survey evidence shows the importance of age in predicting attitudes and behaviour, but such data ‘only describe our problem’ (Abrams 1972: 109). Theories seeking to explain why younger age groups demonstrate a tendency to hold more progressive attitudes than older age groups can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers (Nash 1978). More recent examples include the writings of Ortega y Gasset (Spitzer 1973) and the work of the French Annates school (Esler 1984). However it is Karl Mannheim’s (1952) essay ‘The Problem of Generations’ which is widely regarded as the most systematic and fully developed treatment of the cohort aspect of the ageing process from a sociological perspective (Bengtson, Furlong and Laufer 1974). Accordingly, it is Mannheim’s theory which centrally influenced the conduct of the study reported in this book. In his essay, Mannheim uses ‘generation’ in the sense of ‘cohort’. In the following discussion, I place ‘social’ before all instances of Mannheim’s use of ‘generation’. In this manner, account is taken of the need to be careful in use of terminology, whilst links are maintained with sociological, and cultural, traditions which refer to ‘generation’, meaning cohort. A second reason for introducing the concept of social generation is that Mannheim’s theory represents an elaboration of the concept of cohort. Recognition that individuals belong to a cohort sensitises us to the fact that their location in historical time exposes them to certain experiences, crises and events and excludes them from others. Mannheim takes this idea further. He suggests that there is a key period of exposure, namely, during youth, which has lasting ideological effects. In other words, Mannheim’s argument is that, as a result of differential exposure and exclusion due to location in historical time, there exist different social generations, each having distinctive world views. This, in turn, leads people of different ages to experience the same social and cultural events differently.

Mannheim’s theory of ‘generations’

Mannheim’s (1952) essay on cohort processes is regarded as seminal because it firmly locates cohort within socio-historical contexts, and moreover, is part of a wider sociological theory of knowledge. For Mannheim, ‘knowledge’ (defined by him as a style of thought or world view) is seen as socially conditioned by its location in a socio-historical structure. While discussions in the sociology of knowledge have focused on class location (Abercrombie 1980), Mannheim also identifies cohort location as a key element in the social determination of knowledge. Cohort location, like class location, points to ‘certain definite modes of behaviour, feeling and thought’ (Mannheim 1952: 291). In the case of class location, an individual or group’s position emerges from the existence of an economic and power structure within society. The structure from which cohort location emerges is the ‘existence of biological rhythm in human existence - the factors of life and death, a limited span of life, and ageing’ (Mannheim 1952: 290). Although recognising the influence of biological factors, Mannheim stresses the overriding and ultimate importance of social factors, so that biology is seen to be embedded within social and historical processes. Mannheim is not, of course, implying that mere chronological contemporaneity produces a common consciousness: indeed his contention is that ‘all people living at the same time do not necessarily share the same history’ (Troll 1970: 201). Consequently, contemporaries may experience the same social and cultural phenomena or historical events differently.

For Mannheim, chronologically contemporaneous individuals (that is, all persons now alive) are stratified by the tendency for the formative experiences and early impressions of youth to ‘coalesce into a natural view of the world’ (Mannheim 1952: 298). The individual carries this with them throughout the life span. People are thus crucially influenced by the socio-historical context that predominated in their youth, and in this way, social generations have distinctive historically determined world views. Mannheim is proposing that in order to share social generational location in a sociologically meaningful sense, individuals must be born within the same historical and cultural context and be exposed to particular experiences and events that occur during their formative adult years. This is the general level of social generational location identified by Mannheim. He also provides a more specific and sophisticated analysis of social generational location. First, he recognises that geographical and cultural location will act to internally differentiate social generations, so that not every member will be exposed to exactly the same experiences. Second, he distinguishes between those social generational groupings who actually participate in the key social and cultural events of their time and place and those who do not. Thirdly, he recognises that within ‘actual’ social generations, there may arise differing and opposing responses to social and cultural events, in that there may develop opposing social generational ‘units’.

Mannheim’s discussion of social generations is integrally concerned with the issue of social change (Laufer and Bengtson 1974). Thus he maintains that the likelihood of a cohort developing a distinctive consciousness (of becoming a social generation) is dependent on the tempo of social change. In turn, social generations are regarded as a key element in the production of social change. The ‘fresh contact’ of new cohorts with the already existing cultural and social heritage always means a ‘changed relationship of distance’ and a ‘novel approach in assimilating, using and developing the proffered material’ (1952: 293). The progression of social change is made smoother by the presence of ‘intermediary’ (or buffer) social generations. The implication here is that social generations with the least difference in world views or styles of thought are always adjacent to one another, whilst those with the greatest difference are non-adjacent. In times of accelerated social change, however, when normality is disrupted, the ‘new brooms’ have even greater opportunity and access than the natural, gradual change over, brought about by the ageing and eventual death of all members of a cohort, allows.

The strength of cohort and social generational perspectives, such as Mannheim’s, is their grasping of the defining concern of sociology as a discipline, that is, the relationship between history and biography within society (Mills 1970). Yet a range of conceptual and methodological difficulties arise when conducting empirical research on cohort and social generational processes.

The empirical study of the formation, development and retention of world views over the life course is made problematical by the complex entangling of two further ‘time’ elements, in addition to cohort or social generational experiences : those of ageing or individual biography and of historical or period events. Consequently, researchers may emphasize any one, or a combination, of these three central influences. Stage in life course effects, as in ‘rebellious youth’ or ‘conservative old age’, may be invoked. Period effects (historical, political or economic events or crises) may be seen to influence the world views of people of all ages and cohorts. Finally, explanations may centre around cohort effects, which arise from the importance of adolescent and early adulthood experiences within particular historical contexts for the formation of world views, which then persist over the life span. Empirically, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate these three central influences (Alwin et al 1991).

The authors of one major recent study (Alwin et al 1991) favour the ‘generational-persistence model’ as a ‘useful’ summary of what is known about the formation and development of socio-political orientations over the life course. The ‘generational-persistence model’ (or more properly, the cohort-persistence model) has three components. First, the notion of a period of vulnerability to influence, occurring in late adolescence and early adulthood. Second, the notion that each new cohort experiences that time of life differently, and that there are unique residues within the individual because of those experiences. Third, the notion that, after some early period of influence and change, attitudes become crystallised and increasingly stable with age (Alwin et al 1991: 264). Research evidence is particularly supportive of the first and third components of the model. The importance of late adolescence as a key period of socialization is widely accepted (for review, see Braungart 1984). Moreover, research has found that people of all ages tend to report historical events and changes that occurred in their youth as especially important or meaningful (Schuman and Scott 1989; Stewart and Healy 1989). Evidence also strongly supports the notion that, once formed, world views are retained over the life span (Braungart 1984). Whilst considerable evidence exists in support of the first and third components of the model, opinion as to the long term effects of social generational or cohort experiences (the second component) is rather mixed. In reviews of available evidence, some conclude that there is a degree of support for long term social generational effects (for example, Roberts and Lang 1985), albeit ‘meagre’ (Alwin et al 1991). Others argue that little systematic evidence exists for the lasting effects of social generational experiences (for example, Schuman and Reiger 1992). Still others find that social generational differences may vary as a function of particular issues (for example, Glass et al 1986; Kalish and Johnson 1972; Sears 1983). Alwin et al (1991) reach the conclusion that evidence (including their own) supports the ‘generational-persistence model’. However, they argue that the model may give too much emphasis to cohort processes and neglect other variables. They also suggest that the model may give too much emphasis to the stability of orientations over an individual’s life course, in the face of evidence which shows that changes do occur over time.

The study

Despite the weakness noted above, Mannheim’s work represents the strongest sociological account of cohort processes and it centrally influenced the conduct of the study reported in this book. However, putting Mannheim’s theory into practice was by no means a straightforward exercise. Mannheim’s (1952) essay is essentially a theoretical discussion and does not contain a model or any guidelines as to how the empirical investigation of social generational phenomena is to proceed. Yet, once Mannheim’s sociology of generations is located within his wider sociology of knowledge, particular methodological approaches to the investigation of social generational phenomena are suggested.

For Mannheim, since the crucial aspect of the social conditioning of styles of thought is location in a socio-historical structure, the content and form of knowledge, of ideas, must be analysed in relation ‘to the concrete setting of an historical-social situation’ (Mannheim 1960: 3). Mannheim did not clearly specify exactly what constitutes knowledge in empirical terms (Dant 1991), other than suggesting that words (as the repositories of the meanings that constitute a style of thought or world view) are significant objects for study (see Mannheim 1960: 245). Similarly, within his sociology of generations, Mannheim does not provide any guidelines as to which phenomena count as ‘generational consciousness’. Such shortcomings in the sociology of knowledge are addressed by Mills (1967b). Mills is critical of most sociological theories of knowledge, including Mannheim’s, for their inadequate formulations of the term...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• title
• copy
• contents
• list
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Gender, generation and world views
• 2 Househusbands and breadwinning wives: Accounts of role reversal
• 3 A man’s world? Accounts of equality and discrimination
• 4 A woman’s right? Accounts of abortion
• 5 ‘Freaks’ and ‘normal people’: Accounts of homosexuality
• 6 ‘Just a bit of fun for the men’?: Accounts of Page Three
• 7 ‘Making things better for women’ or ‘going over the top’?: Accounts of feminism
• 8 Conclusions
• Bibliography