As participants negotiated access to university, they often reflected that they had, nevertheless, continued to receive differential treatment from their parents. One of the main ways that this became apparent was in negotiating the location of the university, which impacted directly on women’s living arrangements and ability to socialise. This was particularly noticeable among Muslim women who felt the most restricted in this respect:
That’s quite a cultural norm - it’s expected [for women] to stay at home, and it’s very disapproved of for young… I’m not sure how the Sikh, Hindu
161 community are now, but definitely the Muslim community are very
disapproving of women living on their own, so it’s expected [for] them to stay at home. (Anita)
Muslim participants were usually expected to live at home, which meant that their choice of university was limited to local universities. Often these women felt frustrated by their limited choice, particularly when they had brothers who were allowed to study further afield and live away from home. For instance, Naeema’s father ‘insisted’ she went to the local university while her brothers moved away to study at leading institutions. Given that her father had always treated her as ‘one of the boys’ and pushed for his daughter’s education (see section 4.2.4), Naeema ‘resented’ her father’s differential treatment for her own educational path:
I wanted to live away, I wanted to go to university outside of [my home city] you know…my three brothers who had gone to university prior to me had all moved out of [our home city]… So it wasn’t until I was, I suppose, a lot older when this, you know, [I noticed] that there were certain, you know, differences. (Naeema)
This excerpt captures how some participants’ fathers were both encouraging their daughters to go to university, but at the same limiting their choice and participation. Indeed, in Naeema’s case, it seems that her parents’ differential treatment of siblings based on gender only became apparent to her once she came to negotiate higher education and later reflected on her situation.
Others found that their differential treatment was not only based on gender but also intertwined with sibling hierarchies. Being the first born girl to attend university often meant
162 that these women had less choice in university, living away from home and socialising. For example, Ashira felt that ‘there was a lot more restriction’ placed on her, because she was ‘the first girl, the first-born to go to uni’. Like Naeema, Ashira also found these restrictions somewhat contradictory to their father’s attempts to ‘push’ for their daughter’s education. In one sense, she felt that her father was ‘proud’ as he was ‘pushing’ for her to go, but at the same time:
…it was a lot like… you know uni’s got pubs and stuff around the corners, don’t go there, make sure you’re not seen around in that area and stuff. (Ashira)
Participants’ subject choice was also sometimes a source of contradictions, mirroring Bagguley and Hussain’s (2016) findings. In Ashira’s case, her father allowed her to study engineering ‘because my talents were there’. However, since there were ‘only boys’ in her class, her father went to considerable lengths to restrict her social movements:
So for the first few times every time he came to pick me up, because I didn’t have my own car, I wasn’t allowed that, he would drop me and it was like a system, someone would come pick me up, someone would drop me, and they’d see me with all these guys and they were like, oh dear, oh dear, but they never said anything. (Ashira)
This excerpt suggests that elder siblings like Ashira felt these restrictions were a frustrating part of their negotiations. Yet they also saw their negotiations as worthwhile, not only for themselves, but by ‘pushing the boundaries’ for younger female siblings too, much like the participants in Ramji’s (2007) study.
163 While these women’s fathers were trying to be different by encouraging their daughters, it seems that they struggled to break free from a tendency to treat their daughters differently. Nabeela’s father grappled with his decision to allow his daughter to study away from home to a significant extent. At first, he allowed her to live away for just over the first year of her studies. However, he later changed his mind and ‘insisted’ that she quit her studies. He allowed Nabeela to transfer to a university closer to home (which meant repeating a year), so that she could live with her cousin. At the time, Nabeela felt powerless to challenge the situation: ‘I felt like I was left with no choice…he basically once he put his foot down that was it’. Her father’s decision was something that Nabeela still finds upsetting to this day, referring to this episode of her life as part of her ‘scarred past’. Yet she was determined that her younger sisters would not experience the same as her: ‘I said to my sister…if push comes to shove...don’t listen to dad’. These women’s fathers seemed to want to assert some control over their daughters, despite trying to push for a better position for their daughters in their (future) family hierarchies.
If Muslim participants’ negotiations often centred on location and subject choice, non- Muslim women in this study had to justify their strivings for post-graduate education. In Jasvinder’s case, she describes how she ‘had to fight’ to study for her doctorate, which her parents saw as ‘problematic’ as she had already spent four years studying. These participants’ parents were often concerned because they were keen for daughters to marry and start a family. In Chanda’s case, her parents refused to offer financial support for her to pursue a professional qualification, but were happy to fund her brother despite him quitting several courses. Women like Chanda felt that their parents had different expectations for brothers, who seemed to have far more freedom:
164 …they did support us to become educated and they definitely supported
that, but then it was like they wanted me to just stop studying and get married and have a family whereas they’re not bothered about him (Chanda)
Participants felt that their parents were often under pressure from elder members of the family hierarchy, who saw ‘investing in’ daughters’ education as jeopardising future marriage prospects. For example, Jasvinder’s grandfather felt there was ‘no point’ in her pursuing her doctorate. He feared that her parents would not be able to ‘find a husband for her’ as she would be ‘too educated’, and advised her parents to: ‘concentrate on your son’. As a result, these women described having to ‘fight’ for their post-graduate qualifications, as their parents withheld their financial support. As Jasvinder explains:
I said, I’ll get funding, and I’ll get a job, and if that’s the way I have to see myself through my PhD I’ll do it, and I did. So, I got work in the department, and it was a ridiculous amount of hours just to pay rent and subsistence (Jasvinder)
Some participants also found that while their fathers were pushing for their daughters’ higher education, their mothers were rather ambivalent in their support. Often they felt their mothers were torn between supporting their daughters and ensuring their daughters marry and start a family. Ashira’s mother ‘always followed through’ her father’s wishes for Ashira to be educated, even though ‘deep down mum would have loved it’ if Ashira had ‘got married a bit earlier and had lots of kids’. Raveena reflected that this concern for daughters to marry was part of the role of a traditional South Asian mother:
165 …my mum…was a bit more concerned about…when are you going to get
married and have kids and what if you incur problems…It's an Asian mentality…she just…wants the best for you…and the best, in her mind, is for you to be married and settled, and you have kids. (Raveena)
Here, Raveena views her mother as holding onto an ‘Asian mentality’, but only because her mother wanted ‘the best’ for her daughter. However, Raveena also later reflected that her mother’s ‘concern’ was ‘more for me’ than her brother. In order to try to alleviate her mother’s concerns, Raveena came up with her own ‘five year plan’. Her solution was to find the ‘right’ husband, then complete her PhD. This would enable her to fit her career aspirations around marriage and starting a family. Indeed, for the majority of women in this study, negotiating access to university also opened up possibilities for negotiating marriage, supporting the findings of recent research (Bagguley and Hussain 2016).