Social difference in young women's experiences of Higher Education and transitions to work

This research explores young women’s youth transitions and how they undergo the movement from youth to adulthood, school to university, and from university into the labour market. Extant research on youth transitions has, so far, neglected the complexity of the interaction of axes of social difference with youth transitions, and has not sufficiently interrogated how young women’s identities shape their experiences of university and the workplace. This research addresses this by closely examining, from the perspectives of young women, what these transitions entail in relation to their personal identities. Additionally, this research scrutinises how young women experience the spaces of university and the workplace, appreciating them as sites of change for young women and where power relations unfold amidst these physical environments.  In particular, the research investigates young women’s perceptions of (in)equality and their reactions to discrimination, and examines the implications of differences in experience for higher education and employment outcomes. To do so, this research draws upon a feminist epistemology, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Bourdieu’s use of capitals to analyse interviews with 34 women, ranging from final year undergraduates to recent alumnae from a single, pre-1992 university in the East Midlands. The research finds that young women’s articulations of youth transitions can be helpfully described in relation to a period of ‘emerging adulthood’, with vital conjunctures and critical moments interspersed throughout. Additionally, the research advances our understanding of the extent to which young women’s awareness of their social identities is fractured by regimes of power, and that their experiences of higher education and the workplace are greatly shaped by the interaction of their identities with these environments. The research concludes by arguing that a more holistic, complex view of transitions is needed in order to appreciate the subtleties and wide-ranging factors affecting their experiences. Additionally, the research problematises the extent to which university tackles inequality, and explores the implications of young women’s responses to discrimination in the workplace – demonstrating the complexity of the relationship between awareness and action.