A maternal identity? The family lives of British women graduates pre- and post-1945

History of Education

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 407-426

  Aiston, Sarah ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 28044449716     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00467600500129609     Document Type: Review

References (58)

1. A. Mackinnon, Love and Freedom: Professional Women and the Reshaping of Personal Lives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), x.
2. S. Hamilton, Women and the Scottish Universities c. 1869-1939: a Social History, PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1987, Chapter 6;
3. J. Gibert, Women at the English Universities 1880-1920, PhD, University of North Carolina, 1988, chapter 6. Research conducted by Janet Howarth and Mark Curthoys into the marital patterns of Oxford women showed low marriage rates.
4. See J. Howarth and M. Curthoys, 'The Political Economy of Women's Higher Education in late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain', Historical Research, 60 (1987), 228-9.
5. S. J. Aiston, 'A good job for a girl?: the career biographies of women graduates of the University of Liverpool post-Second World War', Twentieth Century British History. 15 (2004), 361-387.
6. J. Hubback, Wives who went to College (London: William Heinemann, 1957).
7. Hubback, Wives, 25.
8. Op. cit.
9. Hubback, Wives, 32.
10. Hubback, Wives, 28.
11. C. Arregger, Graduate Women at Work (Newcastle: Oriel, 1966), 10.
12. R. K. Kelsall, A. Poole and A. Kuhn, Graduates: the Sociology of an Elite (London: Methuen, 1972), 119.
13. Kelsall et al., Graduates, 126.
14. J. Wakeling, 'University education in twentieth century Scotland, with particular reference to Glasgow University', paper presented at the University of Cambridge, 24 September 1998, conference: 'The transformation of an elite? Women and higher education since 1900'.
15. P. Thane, 'The Careers of Female Graduates of Cambridge University, 1920-1970s', in The Origins of the Modern Career, edited by J. Brown, D. Mitch and M. Leenwan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
16. K. Anderson, Women and the Universities: a Changing Pattern (London: Fawcett Society, 1963), 16.
17. J. Michelson and S. Gee, Coming Late to Motherhood: Twenty Women tell their Stories (Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1984), 51.
18. Wakeling paper.
19. Arregger, Graduate Women, 77.
20. MacKinnon, Love and Freedom, ix.
21. Guild Gazette (University of Liverpool), 23 June 1964, p. 5.
22. M. Ingham, Now we are Thirty: Women of the Breakthrough Generation (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981), 125.
23. Ingham, Now we are Thirty, 116-17.
24. Ingham, Now we are Thirty, 117.
25. See Aiston, 'A good job for a girl'.
26. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Professor Pat Thane, Dr Amy Erickson and Kate Perry, from the Girton project, for allowing me to consult their own questionnaire.
27. A total of 318 questionnaires were sent out. This represented 18% of the total number of women on the alumni lists who studied at the University of Liverpool between the years 1944 and 1979.
28. Sixty-eight out the 82 respondents married; and whilst seven out of 14 women who graduated in the 1940s remained unmarried, of the 35 women who graduated in the 1970s, only four did so. The average age of marriage for those women who graduated in the 1940s was 26 and for those who graduated in the 1970s, the average age was 24. Of the 68 women married, only six did not have children.
29. J. Lewis, The End of Marriage? Individualism and Intimate Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001).
30. Hubback, Wives, 37.
31. S. Rowbotham, A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States (London: Viking, 1997), 361.
32. Ingham, Now we are Thirty, 119.
33. S. Jackson, 'Women and the Family', in Introducing Women's Studies: Feminist Theory and Practice, edited by D. Richardson and V. Robinson (Macmillan: London, 1993), p. 194.
34. C. Dyhouse, 'Storming the citadel or storm in a tea cup? The entry of women into higher education 1860-1920', in Is Higher Education Fair to Women?, edited by S. Acker and D.W. Piper (Guildford: SRHE, 1984), 61.
35. Dyhouse, 'Storming the citadel'.
36. Mackinnon, Love and Freedom, 152.
37. Ingham, Now we are Thirty, 156.
38. P. Nicholson, 'Motherhood and Women's Lives', in Richardson and Robinson, Introducing Women's Studies, 207-8.
39. See Aiston, 'A good job for a girl', for a full discussion of this issue.
40. Nicholson, op. cit., 219.
41. J. Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945 (London: Blackwell, 1992), 69.
42. Ingham, Now we are Thirty, 138.
43. Arregger, Graduate Women, p. 100.
44. A. Oakley, Housewife (London: Allen Lane, 1974).
45. R. Rapoport, Dual-Career Families Re-examined (London: Martin Robertson, 1976), 347.
46. Hubback, Wives, 86.
47. M. Poloma, 'Role conflict and the married professional woman', in Toward a Sociology of Women, edited by C. Safilios-Rothschild (Lexington: Xerox, 1972),
48. as discussed in Rapoport, Toward a Sociology of Women, ibid., 335.
49. Furthermore, some feminist researchers have questioned the extent to which women's subordination is located in the family. For example, are women disadvantaged in the labour market because of their domestic responsibilities, or is women's domesticity a result of gender segregation in waged work?
50. J. Finch, 'Women, "the" family and families', in Women, Power and Resistance: An Introduction to Women's Studies, edited by T. Cosslett, A. Easton and P. Summerfield (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996), 15.
51. A. Witz, 'Women at Work', in Richardson and Robinson, Introducing Women's Studies, 273.
52. A. Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London: Virago, 1977),
53. discussed by S. Lawler, 'Motherhood and identity', in Cosslett, Easton and Summerfield, Women, Power and Resistance, 153-64.
54. See Aiston, 'A good job for a girl', for a full discussion.
55. J. Giles, Women, Identity and Private Life in Britain, 1900-1950 (London: Macmillan, 1995), 20.
56. A. Oakley, The Sociology of Housework (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984),
57. discussed in Jackson, 'Women and the family', 186.
58. Hubback, Wives, 159.