Introduction
In this chapter, I analyse three personal narratives in depth, which focus on early formative experiences through schooling, higher education and some events at the beginning of their teaching years or as adult women. Bridget, Gabriela and Virginia are part of my ‘core narratives’ and the findings here are the result of a thematic analysis with a narrative approach (see chapter two).
My first argument here is that subjectivities are constructed in a relational way (McLaren 2002), particularly, in relation to ‘events in time’, in both the postwar and neoliberal era. Through this I aim to connect biography, history, and social structures (Mills 2000). The events are not relevant in themselves. Rather the events are significant due to ‘the interpretations the women made of them and the importance the women attached to these interpretations’ (Middleton 1993, 68) in constructing their subjectivities. Events in time are conceptualized as meaningful experiences that my participants had, part of their biographies and the historical times in which they lived. Nevertheless, in order to enhance the comprehension of the narratives, I briefly refer to some meaningful ‘encounters’, despite them being the focal point of the next chapter (five). By ‘encounters’ I refer to ‘significant women’ that contributed to my participants’ subjectivity formation. In this chapter, I concentrate on those events connected to diverse expressions of a) patriarchy or gender regimes and to b) feminisms as ideas and movements. Both concepts were defined in the introduction of the thesis.
A second argument refers to the kind of narratives that these women told. The narratives are constructed against different forms of patriarchy in both eras, arising from micro practices of resistance (see framework in chapter one) and constituting counter narratives. Counter narratives or ‘counter discourses’ or ‘counter stories’ are defined as ‘discursive resistance’ which
aimed to ‘challenge and disrupt hegemonic framing of social realities’ (McKenzie-Mohr and Lafrance 2014, 7). Here I analyse the counter narratives to patriarchal discourses of Bridget, Gabriela and Virginia. All of them have expressions of oppositional worldviews (hooks 2000) and resistance to patriarchal practices and discourses. In connection with this argument, I also sustain that their narratives are not the traditional masculine heroic narratives, as ‘subjects are positioned as neither victims nor heroines but as agentic within constraints’ (Stanley 2017, xiv). The narratives underline the structural constraints of the times in which they lived and the opportunities to exercise their resistance.
I selected the narratives of Bridget, Gabriela and Virginia because of their relevance in terms of showing the connection between early subjectivity constructions, biographical events and the postwar and neoliberal eras. The three narratives are different due to the diversity of paths Bridget, Gabriela and Virginia followed in constructing a feminist subjectivity regarding events in time. In addition, they are different in the complex way in which historical times influenced their lives. Their stories illustrate how the spirit of postwar and neoliberal eras is implicated in their subjectivities; highlighting the impact of social and feminist movements on their subjectivities; issues documented by feminist teachers in the USA (Weiler 1988, see chapter one for more details). This relates to how those social, cultural and political contexts were contributing to their initial awareness of gender differences.
Their narratives also illustrate how they addressed expressions of a patriarchal order that hindered their development as girls, teenagers and later as young women. These experiences of discrimination or marginality are considered grounding for women in order to develop feminist stances (Middleton 1989). The concrete expressions that gender discrimination took are different in the postwar and neoliberal eras. Nevertheless, there are commonalities that appeared in some cases, which refers the responses to those patriarchal practices. These experiences resulted in ‘sensing wrongs’ (Ahmed 2017) especially when girls or young women. I conceptualize it as ‘protofeminism’, a non articulated set of emotions that arose from sensing gender injustice. This concept was fully developed in the introduction and is used in this chapter. Additionally, I have also exposed differences between my participants from the postwar (i.e. Bridget and Gabriela) and my participant of the neoliberal generation (Virginia), regarding their ways of
constructing feminist subjectivities and their influences through time. This process, namely to develop feminist subjectivities, assumes a diversity of paths at different points in their lives (Hercus 2005), acknowledging the multiplicity in the construction of subjectivities (Atkins 2005; McLaren 2002) and the presence of the diversity of feminisms (Cain 1997).
The narratives are presented in an order that mirrored a kind of movement through the different eras. I begin with the early lives of Bridget and Gabriela in the 1960s and 1970s; then follow Gabriela’s experiences in the 1980s when she went as a mature student to university; moving forward into the narrative of Virginia, who was born, schooled and began to teach in the neoliberal era. Initially, I examine how Bridget and Gabriela’s narratives follow different routes, despite many commonalities. For instance, both are women of a working class Irish ascendancy, born in the postwar era, but their experiences with patriarchy and feminisms are different. I continue with the narrative of Virginia, part of the neoliberal generation, which shows a completely different experience with neoliberal expressions of patriarchy and in times of a postfeminist sensibility (Gill 2007). Each narrative is introduced with some key characteristics and is situated on a biographical timeline (see Figure 2, 3, 4). The biographical timelines identify some of the milestones in each case; their engagement in feminist issues, activism and the readings of women writers, activists or women in history. These last topics are developed in chapter five (readings linking to significant women) and chapter six (pedagogy and activism). It is important to bear in mind that this timeline was developed after the interviews in order to situate their stories, rather than created by the interviewees as explained in more detail in the methodology (see chapter two).
Figure 6 Core narratives used in chapter four
Pseudonym Age
Class
back-
ground
Ethnicity
Teaching
1st/ 2nd
profession
Years
teaching
Working
scheme
Place last
school
Last School
Type
Last
Position
Union Roles
(past/ present)
Date
Interview
Bridget
59
Working
class
White
British
(mix)
1st
36
Retired
from FT
North
England
Secondary Teacher
Member
Representative
2013/15
Gabriela
65
Working
class
White
British
(mix)
2nd
15
Retired
from PT
South
England
Secondary Teacher
Member
2013/15
Virginia
31
Middle
class
White
British
1st
8
PT (before
FT)
London
Secondary
Further
Education
College
Teacher,
Head of
Depart.
Member
2015/16
Legend: Postwar generation Neoliberal generation
Bridget’s narrative of struggle, facing patriarchy outside the
home and feminism from early on.
When I first interviewed Bridget in November 2013, she was 59 years old and on leave because of stress and health issues. By the 2nd interview in early 2015 she was retired from 37 years teaching. She had had difficult times with educational leadership who privileged ‘hard masculinities’ (Blackmore 1999) and adhered to gendered ‘new managerialism’ (Lynch, Grummell and Devine 2012), specifically with a new appointed Head of Department. According to Bridget’s words, ‘a young man out to make his reputation’ who was ‘quite a bully’ and harassed her. She had spent her whole teaching career in one school and began to teach in 1977. She self identified as feminist and told a story of activism inside and outside her union. She grew up in postwar times in the north of England, in a working class household of Irish immigrants. Bridget’s journey as a girl, woman, teacher and feminist has been reconstructed in a narrative of struggles against patriarchal practices and discourses. Her story, told in neoliberal times, started in the postwar era. Her narrative, as she elaborated and I reconstruct it, sheds light on how a feminist subjectivity is constructed and moulded by biography and history. Her upbringing in an unprivileged family pushed her forward to improve her life conditions highlighting the role of education. She experienced gender discrimination outside her home of origin, issues that prompted ‘sensing wrongs’ (Ahmed 2017) and experienced the presence of a protofeminism in her girlhood. Her awareness of a patriarchal order in society began in her school days and later on as a young woman. At the same time, she mentioned the presence of feminism in postwar England, especially during the 1960s and 70s.
I argue that Bridget’s narrative is at the same time both typical and atypical of a working class girl of the postwar generation in England. Like many working class children of that generation, she failed the ‘11 plus’ exam. Similar to many girls of the time, she also had to deal with different expressions of patriarchal order such as gender discrimination and violence. In contrast to other working class girls in the late 1960s, she managed to go to a grammar school to do her ‘A levels’, after completing her ‘O level’ exams in her secondary modern school (see Figure 7 Bridget’s Biographical timeline). Then she progressed onto Teacher Training College. She and her
sister were the first in her family to go into higher education. From her teen years she began to construct an alternative pathway in terms of the prescribed positions for girls and women as examined below. She experienced similar social movement to the one of feminist working class academics, and so can be seen as part of ‘successful female class shifters’ (Hey 2006, 301). These transformations involved not only economic autonomy, but also decision making autonomy (Kabeer 2001), as for instance her option not to have children.
Bridget’s narrative has some characteristics of struggle and transformation that are similar to ‘modernist stories’ defined as a journey that starts with suffering, followed by struggles and arriving at an outcome (Plummer 1995, 54-55). Bridget highlighted her difficult starting point as a working class girl and what she had overcome. This contrasted with the path of her mother and other girls of her generation, whose identities were constructed around being wives and mothers. Nevertheless, I also argue that this is not an ‘epic or heroic’ narrative in the classical masculine sense because she was aware and has faced many enduring challenges in the neoliberal era as developed in chapter six. She also constructed a narrative in relation to the presence of feminism as analysed here and in relation to other women as stressed in chapter five. In that sense, she constructed a relational subjectivity which connected to others and was not separate to them. This made her narrative closer to postmodern or ‘late modernist stories’ (Plummer 1995).
Bridget grew up in the late 1950s onwards, in an underprivileged household. She described this as, ‘we were at the bottom of the ladder, from a very poor family’. Her mother worked as a ‘live in domestic servant’ before marriage and took care of the home and children after; her father was a ‘Navvy’ (a labourer digging the roads). Both ‘were ill educated’, nevertheless, she was encouraged to study if she ‘didn’t want that sort of life’. For her parents and later for herself, education was an instrument for social mobility as she described, ‘education was always prized because they knew it was the way out of poverty and all the rest of it. My sisters and I were always encouraged to do two things, go to church and do well at school’. Looking retrospectively, Bridget reflects on her schooling years and the difficulties she had to overcome. She faced discrimination by class, gender and ethnicity. She made clear the way working class children were treated and the low expectations people had for them in the 1960s and early 1970s. She explained how the educational system discriminated against them through the ‘11 plus’, an exam that ‘was biased by class’ according to her and scholars(Royle 2012; Black 2010; Ranson 2008; see also chapter three). As she states, ‘80% of the children in the country were just pushed to one side because they were expected to go and work in the factories, the mills and docks; all the manual labour and the low grade jobs. So, that is how things were’! She also compares herself with other children in the same cohort at school and stresses the different path she and her sisters took.
They [children] all settled for leaving school at 14 or 15 and just getting a job. Not a career, just a job, as you could in those days, […] Out of my whole class at school [sec. modern], there was only myself and a boy who became teachers. Most people didn’t have any vision; they had no idea that if they wanted to do things they could have worked hard and achieved.
In her narrative, Bridget not only highlights her starting point as a working class child, but also as a girl; she brings to the front gendered dimensions in her early formative experiences. She only realized that being a ‘woman’ could be a disadvantage when confronted with the world outside her home, ‘It is only when I went out into the world that I realised that being a woman, female, a girl [was something] that in some people’s view should hold me back. So it was quite a shock to me’! Her surprise regarding what people expected from women could be understood because the strong image she
had of women, as her mother ‘was a powerful force in the house’ despite her domestic role; she had only older sisters and her father was a ‘weak figure’. Facing patriarchal gendered expectations stands out in her memories when she confronted peers, teachers and people in general. She recalled several incidents at her school and in the part time work she had, where she realized what discourses circulated about girls, ‘you just weren’t expected to achieve anything’. People used to make fun of her when she continued studying for the exams, as if it was something foolish to do as ‘there were plenty of jobs’. These were the times of full employment (Hobsbawm 1994), as developed in chapter three. Teachers also had no expectations of her and her sisters at secondary school, ‘a lot of teachers still never really thought that we would sit the exams and passed’. She also mentions incidents regarding her peers, where boys used to say things like ‘if you stay on for your exams and go and become a teacher, nobody will want to marry you. You’ll be lonely’. But she resisted those ideas, she did not agree, she thought if she had ‘a good job’, she does not ‘need a man’. This quote reflects what happened to professional women in those times, as ‘women who were successful in their careers quite often were single because you have to give up your job’. Until the 1960s ‘marriage bars’ were present in several professions including teaching5.
In addition to gendered expectations, Bridget had experienced gender discrimination and violence at school and in workplaces, illustrating how widespread patriarchal practices were. Sexual harassment was accepted as normal, as she said, ‘the kind of sexual assault that went on all the time without it being acknowledged; men fooling about with [women]’. For instance she remembered ‘being mauled by the boys’ at the secondary modern school she was at; ‘they weren’t serious sexual assaults [but] they would be called sexual assaults now’. As a teenager, she did not think of the actions as inappropriate or something to be reported, as the quote illustrates,
They [boys] would try to grope you, put their hands out and touch you. […] There was a long path before you actually got to the school buildings and you always tried to walk with a girl or a group of girls because if you were the only girl then, some of the boys would try to put their hand up your skirt and that sort of thing. You never
thought of telling anybody! It never occurred to any of us to say anything about it! We just took it.
These events show how patriarchal practices were present in several places in the postwar era, despite feminism becoming more audible the 1960s and 70s. Added to those experiences, Bridget was aware of ethic discrimination remarking that ‘In my parents’ day, Irish people were often the butt of discrimination - no Blacks, no dogs, no Irish - was seen on notices displayed in pubs and boarding houses. Jokes about thick Irish were plentiful until the mid-90s’. All these experiences of discrimination regarding gender, class and ethnicity that she lived through were elaborated later in her life and instilled in her ideas about social justice that she pushed forward in her worldviews and politics as a teacher and activist.
As a girl, Bridget’s reactions to patriarchal gendered expectations, gender discrimination and violence towards women were of surprise and constituted a lack of understanding of what was happening, but ‘sensing wrong’ (Ahmed 2017). She was not able to articulate her feelings or to argue with people, she was voiceless, and therefore I contend she had a protofeminist subjectivity as a girl. This bewilderment is something Bridget has in common with other women in this research. As a girl, Bridget was clear upon her position; she rejected those practices. For instance, she did not ‘like that attitude’ regarding people making jokes about her preparing for exams. As illustrated from the beginning of her story, she had to struggle with, overcome and go against those discriminations and mainstream patriarchal discourses about women during the postwar era. These micro resistant acts and protofeminism developed through her everyday life experiences was beginning to take form and be part of her subjectivity during her early years. As described before, Bridget failed the ‘11 plus’ exam, as did many other working class girls and went to a secondary modern school. Nevertheless, at that school there were ‘O level exams’, and she followed the path traced by her older sisters who undertook the exams. She and her sisters changed then to a Grammar school and continued studying and all of them became professionals. Her sisters played a key role regarding her educational trajectory in conjunction with other family influences already mentioned. She explained her experiences as follows,
It was unusual for Secondary Moderns to offer these exams, as they were normally the preserve of the Grammar school. Maybe the fact that the school was Roman Catholic is relevant, I don’t know. Also, the ‘11 plus’ was being seen as outmoded as the comprehensive school movement was making its voice heard. My sister, who is seven years older than me, was in the first cohort to stay on at our school to take O levels. My other sister also stayed on for O levels.
Bridget’s story shows how she escaped a working class woman’s destiny in terms of doing unskilled work or preparing for marriage and motherhood. Despite having failed the ’11 plus’, having to deal with patriarchal gender expectations and difficulties; she took an alternative pathway. As expressed in the following quote, she avoided the mainstream social mandates for girls and women,
The girls were going to be typists and the boys would go and work in the mills and the factories […]. They said we are meant to do these sorts of things and my sisters and I sort of went… Ah! But we can do that [be a professional] if we want too, if we try. You have to have that ambition and somebody has to help you have that