Theorizing Social Class and Education

Diane Reay, Carol Vincent, Diane Reay, Carol Vincent

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134929764
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Theorizing Social Class and Education presents a selection of writing on class analysis within sociology of education as it has evolved over the last decade both in the UK, and internationally. Moving from a narrow focus on class position and categorisation, to a much broader view on behaviours, attitudes, identities and practices, the contributors explore and theorize the ways in which particular individuals develop their perspectives and understandings of the social world, and the role education plays in shaping these.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

Class, gender, (hetero)sexuality and schooling: paradoxes within working-class girls’ engagement with education and post-16 aspirations

Louise Archer, Anna Halsall and Sumi Hollingworth

This paper discusses the ways in which inner-city, ethnically diverse, working-class girls’ constructions of hetero-femininities mediate and shape their dis/engagement with education and schooling. Drawing on data from a study conducted with 89 urban, working-class young people in London, attention is drawn to three main ways through which young women used heterosexual femininities to construct capital and generate identity value and worth; namely, investment in appearance through ‘glamorous’ hetero-femininities, heterosexual relationships with boyfriends, and the ‘ladettte’ discourse. We discuss how and why young women’s investments in particular forms of heterosexual working-class femininity can play into their disengagement from education and schooling, drawing particular attention to the paradoxes that arise when these constructions play into other oppressive power relations.

Introduction

Current educational debates in the United Kingdom and other western nation-states (such as the USA, Australia and New Zealand) remain highly concerned with the issue of boys’ ‘underachievement’ (Francis, 1999; Younger et al., 1999; Skelton, 2000; Francis & Skelton, 2005a, b). In the United Kingdom, such debates run alongside, and overlap with, education policy concerns to redress the continued low rates of progression into further and higher education among ‘working-class’ young people (see Archer et al., 2003). Within such debates, particular emphasis has been placed on increasing male post-compulsory education participation rates (for example, National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education, 1997; Department for Education and Skills, 2002, 2004).

As numerous writers have pointed out, this policy preoccupation with boy’s and men’s educational underachievement and non-progression is fundamentally misleading, since not all boys are doing badly and not all girls are doing well and there are complex patterns of difference across social class, ‘race’/ethnicity and gender (Epstein et al., 1998; Paechter, 1998; Gillborn & Mirza, 2000; Francis & Skelton, 2005b). Furthermore, in terms of post-16 progression, as Jane Kenway insightfully notes,

… leaving school early is almost always more problematic for girls [who] […] find it more difficult to access paid work than their male peers and […] tend to be significantly over-represented in the ‘out of the labour market’ figures. (Kenway, 2003, p. ix)

This paper aims to contribute to sociology of education and feminist work that is concerned with developing understandings about the ongoing (‘hidden’) issue of working-class girls’ educational disengagement and resistance and the inequalities that working-class young women must negotiate in relation to post-16 educational participation.

Since the 1970s, feminists and sociologists of education have been drawing attention to how working-class girls engage in subcultural forms of resistance to education through performances of femininity. In particular, attention has been drawn to how ‘hyper-heterosexual’ forms of femininity (e.g. organised around themes of sexuality, romance, relationships with boys/men, marriage, motherhood, and so on) may be implicated within girls’ resistances to schooling (for example, McRobbie & Garber, 1976; McRobbie, 1978; Griffin, 1985). Since this early pivotal work, it has been noted that many girls’ and young women’s aspirations and expectations have undergone various shifts in relation to issues such as marriage (for example, Sharpe, 1994), careers and educational choices (Francis, 2000). These changes are set against the backdrop of a ‘feminisation’ of educational achievement. However, despite these developments, working-class young women continue to leave school earlier, and with fewer qualifications, than their middle-class female peers.

Contemporary research suggests that heterosexuality continues to be a strong defining element within many working-class young women’s constructions of femininity and their resistance to social and educational inequalities (for example, Hey, 1997; Skeggs, 1997). For instance, it has been suggested that working-class young women’s horizons of choice continue to be structured in terms of leaving school at 16 with the expectation of working locally and ‘settling down’ in a heterosexual relationship and having children (Arnot et al., 1999; Connolly & Healy, 2004). Connolly and Healy (2004) suggest that locality and social interrelationships structure and reinforce a hyper-heterosexual female habitus that prevents girls from aspiring or expecting beyond the local context. However, it has also been argued that investment in hyper-heterosexual femininity is not the sole preserve of working-class young women. For instance, recent research with primary school girls indicates that one of most popular ways of ‘doing girl’ among both working-class and middle-class girls is through the performance of hyper-heterosexualised femininity (for example, Ali, 2003; Reay, 2001; Renold, 2005).

However, recent years have also witnessed media panics about the rise of the (working-class) ‘ladette’, who apes ‘laddish’ (Francis, 1999) male underachievement and invests in ‘non-feminine’ modes of behaviour, such as ‘hard drinking’, swearing, fighting and being loud, rude and sexually explicit (see Jackson, forthcoming). Indeed, the ‘ladette’ is even the subject of a make-over television show that aims to transform such young women (From Ladette to Lady, ITV, June 2005).

In this paper, we attempt to add to these ongoing debates to shed further light on exactly how hyper-heterosexual femininities are differently implicated in working-class girls’ disengagement or exclusion from schooling and education by examining articulations of identity and engagement with schooling among urban working-class young women. We tease out contemporary forms of heterosexual femininity that are implicated in the young women’s negotiations with education and schooling, and discuss how and why young women’s investments in particular forms of heterosexual working-class femininity can play into disengagement from education and schooling.

Within the analysis we draw upon a ‘culturalist’ form of class analysis (Skeggs, 1997, 2004; Devine & Savage, 2000; Savage, 2000) that understands social class as ‘fuzzy’, produced through a combination of social, cultural and economic practices and relations of power. We also make use of a Bourdieuian (for example, Bourdieu, 1986, 1993) conceptual framework, in which social and educational inequalities are understood as contextually produced (within and across social fields) through interactions between the ‘habitus’ and forms of resource, or ‘capital’ (economic, social, cultural and symbolic). This approach is used to consider how the value afforded to different forms of capital will be largely dependent upon the extent to which they are recognised as symbolically legitimate, or dominant (Skeggs, 2004). Using this theoretical framework, we draw attention to the paradoxes that arise due to tensions between locations of social class and gender, and suggest that while the young women use heterosexual femininities as a means to generate capital, it is ultimately paradoxical because these constructions simultaneously play into other oppressive power relations.

The study

This paper draws on data collected as part of a two-year study, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, exploring the identities and aspirations of young London pupils who have been identified by their schools as at risk of dropping out of schooling and unlikely to progress into post-16 education.

Overall, data were collected from 89 working-class¹ young people across six London schools. Fifty-three young people were individually tracked over years 10 and 11 (14–16 years old), with each young person being interviewed three or four times²across three separate phases of the study. Discussion groups were also conducted with 36 additional young people. Eight pupils also completed photographic diaries. The sample included boys and girls from a variety of ethnic backgrounds³ (46 white UK, 18 Black African/Caribbean, 10 mixed ethnicity, six Asian, three Middle Eastern, five white other). This paper concentrates on the 37 young women who took part in the study (23 girls who were individually tracked and 14 girls who took part in discussion groups).

Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with 19 members of staff, including head teachers, heads of year, subject teachers, inclusion managers, learning mentors and Connexions advisors. A small sample of five parents were also interviewed (four white UK mothers and one Bangladeshi mother).

Pupils were sampled from six London comprehensive schools (Blackwell Street, Cowick, Hillside Park, Riverway, Eastleigh Central and Littleton⁴), of which two were single sex (Cowick School for girls, and Littleton School for boys). The schools represented a geographical spread across the London area.

Interviews were conducted by one of four interviewers (two white women, one black Caribbean woman and one Turkish man). All interviews and discussion groups were digitally audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. Parental consent was obtained for all participants and the young people chose their own pseudonyms.

The following data analysis sections discuss the paradoxes underlying young women’s articulations of heterosexual femininity and their engagement with education and schooling. We begin by outlining how the young women in the study invested in their appearance through ‘glamorous’ working-class hetero-femininities and attention is to the limitations of these identities as a form of capital and resistance. We then consider implications of the young women’s investments in heterosexual relationships with boyfriends’ as a form of capital before finally considering the paradox of the ‘ladette’ and young women’s performances of ‘Other’ working-class hetero-femininities.

Girls’ investment in appearance: the paradox of (‘glamorous’) working-class hetero-femininities as a form of capital

Most of the young women in the study were substantially invested in producing heterosexual, ‘desirable’ and ‘glamorous’ (Skeggs, 1997) femininities through manipulation of their bodies and appearance. ‘Successful’ performances brought peer status and approval, and many girls visibly put considerable effort into constructing their everyday appearance, which they then displayed with obvious pride. For example, Leah dressed in black and off-set her outfit with gold jewellery, striking make up and crafted her hair into a detailed ringlet pattern on one side of her head. Jermina sported a pink look, with pink accessories, a large pink ruffle, a pink bowler puma handbag, a pink jacket, pink watch and braided hair. Jane had ever-changing hair colours and styles between each phase of the research and described spending all the £40 per week that she earned from babysitting on her appearance. The importance placed on these investments and performances by the young women was also highlighted in their photo-diaries. For example Nadia took photographs of her favourite nail varnish, perfume and accessories such as her mobile phone. When discussing her photographs, Nadia also spent a considerable amount of time evaluating and debating which photographs of her were ‘ugly’ or ‘nice’.

The young women constructed their appearance/s through the manipulation of various classed, gendered and racialised symbols, and through the fusion of global brands (especially Nike; see Archer et al., 2005) with local identifications and subject positions. In this way, they performed culturally entangled (Hesse, 2000) or translocational (Anthias, 2001) femininities, which crossed boundaries of ‘race’/ethnicity, social class and space. For instance, girls combined elements of black, urban US styles (notably ‘bling bling’ fashion) with ‘unisex’ (although often coded as ‘male’) items of sportswear (such as Nike trainers or tracksuits) and hyper-feminine ‘sexy’ clothes, make-up and hairstyles. These performances—while constituting an identifiable heterosexual working-class feminine appearance—were also grounded within a disruption of binaries of Black/White and masculine/feminine styles (e.g. teaming tracksuit trousers with high heels; trainers with ‘sexy’/‘glamorous’ tops, and so on).

As various feminist writers have noted, working-class women’s investment in their (heterosexual) appearance constitutes one of the few available sites for the generation of symbolic capital (Skeggs, 1997). Young women can achieve a sense of power and agency from their performances of hyper-heterosexual femininities (Hey, 1997) and even fairly young, primary school-aged girls can recognise (and hence take up) a hyper-feminine subject position that is imbued with ‘status and desirability’ (Renold, 2005, p. 40).

The young women in our study were similarly invested in the production of their personal appearance as a means for generating capital and exercising agency in their everyday lives. However, as we shall now argue, this form of capital is also paradoxical because it is implicated in positioning the girls conflictually within educational discourses and it plays into the formation and reinforcement of oppressive social relationships, rather than providing a simple release/escape from social inequalities.

Girls frequently talked about how their investments in producing a ‘desirable’ heterosexual, working-class, feminine appearance brought them into conflict with schools. For instance, they explained how they were frequently chastised for not having the ‘correct’ appearance and were regularly punished for wearing ‘too much’ or the ‘wrong sort’ of jewellery (e.g. Jordan), dis-allowed items of clothing (e.g. Yesim), and a raft of other issues concerning their hair and make-up (e.g. Jane).

Staff who were interviewed also suggested that working-class girls’ embodied femininities and investments in appearance were antithetical to a ‘good’ pupil subject position. In particular, the young women’s preoccupation with ‘looking the part’ was constructed as a ‘distraction’ that mitigated against their engagement with education and schooling.

Well, what the girls do, obviously there’s people like Beyoncé,⁵ they do look up to them. Just looking good to them is good. ‘Yeah, I want to look good’ and, ‘yeah, I’m going to have my man by my side’ type of thing. But I would say the boys focus more on what’s going on but the girls are just looking the part and having the materialistic stuff …They’re too busy focussing on looking good and whatever. They spend their time in the toilets because every time, even if I go up there now, they’re all doing their make up and their hair, trying to look the part because if they don’t look the part […] they will get teased. Because this culture is you have to look good, you have to wear the right stuff and they focus more on that than they focus on their education … Because of that pressure, if that was lifted they would have more time to do this and that, I feel. It’s like the girls, ‘why are you ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Introduction
• 1. Class, gender, (hetero)sexuality and schooling: paradoxes within working-class girls’ engagement with education and post-16 aspirations
• 2. The moral dimension of class and gender identity-making: poverty and aggression in a secondary school in the city of Buenos Aires
• 3. Teachers and the emotional dimensions of class in resource-affected rural Australia
• 4. Social class and participation in further education: evidence from the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales
• 5. White middle-class parents, identities, educational choice and the urban comprehensive school: dilemmas, ambivalence and moral ambiguity
• 6. Devising inequality: a Bernsteinian analysis of high-stakes testing and social reproduction in education
• 7. ‘It’s all becoming a habitus’: beyond the habitual use of habitus in educational research
• 8. Working-class boys, educational success and the misrecognition of working-class culture
• 9. From sociological fictions to social fictions: some Bourdieusian reflections on the concepts of ‘institutional habitus’ and ‘family habitus’
• 10. Between the estate and the state: struggling to be a ‘good’ mother
• Index