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So far, this chapter has explored the diversity of ways the participants subjectively experienced their classed origins and were positioned by their (im)mobility through social and academic education. I want to look now at how these positionings create material differences, which accumulate across the life course resulting in economic disparities in older age.

Although most participants did not identify employment as a particular site where classed differences were overt or troubling, some were able to

articulate how their working-class origins had impacted on their middle-class careers. As a teacher and author Kate was aware of the kudos her working-class, lesbian status offered her employers:

And there was a group called ‘Working Class Women Through Higher Education’ so those of us that had that class identity began to

the year after. And I was kind of the working-class token at the Women’s Press; I served the lesbian slot and the working-class slot so they were sorted.

In the 1980s Kate published several books to great acclaim. However, another extract from her interview shows that, despite her success as an author, she wasn't confident operating in a middle-class world; her working-class habitus, her sense of being an imposter, still holding her back:

I didn't know enough about getting agents - about getting agents or competition to handle that world and it comes back to class. There's the feeling of ‘they won't let you in’. And my mum used to say that,

‘I'd like to be middle-class but they won't let you in’. It's a very, very complex dynamic and they won't let you in.

Jacqueline’s understanding of what it meant to be ‘properly’ middle-class was also complicated. She described herself as aspiring working-class;

despite her grammar school and university education and job as a senior teacher she still didn't view herself as middle-class and felt she had lacked the confidence and cultural competence to progress further in her job:

Class has a great deal of meaning. I still think it’s one of the hidden factors in almost every aspect of our lives really. The friends we make, the people we feel comfortable with, how easy we do things, what we put into our lives. I think class is more about how you feel about yourself and your place in the world and what you should be achieving than it is about what you do. […] You know, I was going up the scale, I got to head of lower school and the next step would have been deputy head and I took one look and I thought, ‘Oh no, […] No I don't want to do that.’ Now there was nothing pushing me to feel, ‘But you should! Of course!’

Most discussion of employment recollected participants’ experiences of class and gender as a restriction on certain occupations. In 1968, only 29%

of children at maintained schools were still in education at the age of sixteen compared with 72% of children at non-maintained schools. Boys were more likely to stay on than girls and strong geographical differences existed, with

children in the north of England significantly less likely to stay in education than those in the south.²⁸ Unfortunately, delays to the raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) from 15 to 16 meant that the change, planned in 1964, was not implemented until 1972, the year my youngest participant turned 16. Several participants left school at the age of fifteen often with disastrous consequences for their employment prospects and far-reaching impact on their chances of accruing a living pension. What is very evident from the narratives is that although many of the ‘working-class educated’

participants still experience the conflict and tensions inherent in the divided habitus and retain feelings of insecurity about their classed positions, in reality many of them have had access to more permanent employment and better pensions than those participants whose class location has not

changed, resulting in greater financial security across their lifetimes and in their older age.

Michelle just missed out on the extension of the school leaving age, but did manage to gain a degree as an adult. Now in her late fifties, and in recovery from cancer, she is still doing a variety of quite physical jobs including DIY, decorating, joinery and gardening:

I left school at 15 and I had no qualifications at all so I started out in an office job. I've worked in factories, I've worked on the buses, I've worked for Royal Mail, I worked in a cash and carry in the butcher department. I've worked stuffing teddies in a factory […] I've filled washing up bottles and bleach bottles. I've worked on production lines, I worked in electronics, I've worked in IT, I've done all sorts.

Michelle (born 1956) self-employed, working when she can.

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Michelle now self-defines as middle-class, seeing her mobility not as a consequence of education or occupational status but acquired indirectly through her sexuality via her association with middle-class women in lesbian groups. Her description of herself as being both middle-class and working-class contains some of the ambiguity highlighted in previous studies of working-class in the North of England (Savage et al., 2001) and she hints at a desire to escape her working-class origins in a way that no other participant did:

I am working-class because I work but I'm now middle-class […] I mix with professional people now. Teachers, social workers, the usual.

[…] It was a completely different type of person to the people I'd mixed with before. Different values, different beliefs, different

attitudes, you know? And it was, although I suppose I didn't realise it at the time, I just thought these are nice people, I like these people, and I didn't really think about it much at the time, but it was because, I think, they were middle-class and they had different attitudes, a different attitude to life and a different outlook.

Susan’s interview had a fatalistic quality; education had no transformative influence on her life. She grew up (and still lives in) in a small Yorkshire town, left school at fifteen and saw her factory job, (and marriage and children) as inevitable for someone of her class and gender:

We just went into local factory, like sewing you know. ‘Cause it were good money, so, that were it. There were no […] wanting to get on...

Despite their original straight marriages and their status as (predominantly single) adoptive, biological or co-parents, all the participants have also worked throughout their lives; indeed eight women continue to work in some form or other. Lesbians in Jones and Nystrom’s (2002) study had been largely sufficient and independent for most of their lives. Their self-esteem was often strongly connected to workplace achievements. This suggests a flexibility of gender roles that is a key part of lesbian identity and may contribute towards resilience in older age. For many women,

particularly working-class and lone parents, the financial imperative to work is great; two participants talked of their deep regret that they could not have stayed at home with children but, in the absence of a male breadwinner, had to work outside the home:

I've had to be a career woman because of […] not being married. I've been conscious of the fact that I've had to support my daughter like a one parent family almost and make sure that I've been able to earn a good salary so I've had to work really hard like most gay women do.

[…] If I’d have had the choice, I would have been a housewife […] but not having the choice I've pushed myself and worked all my life.

Shirley (born 1948) still working as an adult foster carer.

In addition to the classed aspect of the labour market, which confined participants such as Susan and Gillian to factories, the deeply ingrained sexism of the 1950s and 1960s meant that only certain jobs were seen as

‘suitable for girls’; participants were clustered in several professions and 13 had been teachers at some point in their career. Having been streamed at school, Val’s restricted education meant that her employment opportunities were limited and dependent on chance. Between the ages of 13 and 15 when she left school, she had been placed on a ‘commercial course’:

Well I, I got into the bank. ‘Cause my dad was in the bank. I mean one of the few things he was useful for. But the first letter I ever received from an employer said ‘well you're not up to our usual standard but we’ll give you a trial’ you know. That's a really good start, you know. So I was lucky to get into the bank really.

Val (born 1940) retired secretary.

This section has illustrated the ways participants’ social class was either transformed or held unchanged by the beliefs and practices of the 1950s education system, leading to occupational differences, which in turn have economic implications across the life course. Mindful that the essence of social class is greater than the sum of one’s education and occupation

experience, looking at the meaning these (im)mobilities held for my participants.

4.5 Theorising adult class identity: ‘Upward’ mobility and habitus