A Good Job for a Girl? The Career Biographies of Women Graduates of the University of Liverpool Post-1945

Aiston, S.J.

Abstract

The opponents of women’s higher education in the nineteenth century feared that a university education for women would radically alter the ‘separate spheres’ and ultimately lead to a sexual revolution. This article suggests that in terms of the career biographies of university-educated women, they need not have feared. Drawing on a range of data sources, the article documents the limited, gendered career options that faced graduate women post-1945, despite the increase in both educational and employment opportunities. There remained astounding persistence in sexist assumptions about women’s life-plans; even for the academic elite, the role of wife and mother was never lost sight of. Graduate women negotiated the labour market within the confines of a discourse that emphasized a ‘good job for a girl’ as opposed to a career for a woman.

Citation

Aiston, S. (2004). A Good Job for a Girl? The Career Biographies of Women Graduates of the University of Liverpool Post-1945. Twentieth Century British History, 15(4), 361-387. https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/15.4.361

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2004
• Deposit Date: Jan 10, 2007
• Journal: Twentieth Century British History
• Print ISSN: 0955-2359
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-4674
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 361-387
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/15.4.361
• Keywords: Higher education, Employment, Labour market, Sexism.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1630645