ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:

FEMINIST THEORY

FEMINISM FOR GIRLS

 FEMINISM FOR GIRLS
An adventure story

Edited by
ANGELA MCROBBIE AND TRISHA MCCABE

Volume 8
First published in 1981
This edition first published in 2013
by Routledge
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Selection and editorial matter © 1981 Angela McRobbie and Trisha McCabe Contributions
© 1981 Routledge & Kegan Paul
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ISBN: 978-0-415-53401-7 (Set)

eISBN: 978-0-203-08796-1 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63674-2 (Volume 8)
eISBN: 978-0-203-08506-6 (Volume 8)
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Feminism for girls
Feminism for girls
An adventure story

Edited by
Angela McRobbie and Trisha McCabe
First published in 1981
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street, London WC1E 7DD,
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA and
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Ox on RG9 1EN
Set in 10 on 12pt Journal by
Columns, Reading
and printed in Great Britain by
Robert Hartnoll Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Selection and editorial matter
©Angela McRobbie and Trisha McCabe 1981
Contributions © Routledge & Kegan Paul 1981
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Feminism for girls.

1. Adolescent girls — Great Britain —
Addresses, essays, lectures. I. McRobbie,
Angela. II. McCabe, Trisha.
HQ798.F45 305.2’3 81-11921

ISBN 0-7100-
AACR2
0961-5

The manuscript was typed by Wendy Bradshaw

 Contents

1 Introduction
Angela McRobbie and Trisha McCabe

Part I Experience

2 Little women, good wives: is English good for girls?

Gill Frith
3 The golden pathway
Amanda McLoughlin
4 Schools and careers: for girls who do want to wear the
trousers
Trisha McCabe
5 ‘They call me a life-size Meccano set’: super-secretary or
super-slave?
Hazel Downing
6 ‘Now that I'm married . . .’
Dorothy Hobson
7 Just like a Jackie story
Angela McRobbie
8 Resistances and responses: the experiences of black girls in
Britain
 Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar

Part II Making changes

9 Romance and sexuality: between the devil and the deep blue
sea?
Myra Connell, Tricia Davis, Sue McIntosh, Mandy Root
A note on lesbian sexuality
Trisha McCabe and Sharon K.
10 Learning to be a girl: girls, schools and the work of the
Sheffield Education Group
Anne Strong
11 Working with girls: write a song and make a record about it!
Monika Savier
Translated by Patricia Harbord
1 Introduction
Angela McRobbie and Trisha McCabe
Illustrated by Phil Goodall

Dangerous girls!

To the world at large it might seem a bit strange, linking the Women's
Liberation Movement and feminism with ideas of adventure. Hardly
surprising, when most of the mass media do their best to reduce
anything to do with women's liberation to the antics of a minority
fringe group. As far as they are concerned, we are all dull, boring,
and quite united in our lack of humour. With this kind of publicity to
contend with, it does indeed take an adventurous girl to give
feminism more than a second thought. But what exactly is the basis
of this war waged on women who refuse to conform to society's
image of how women should look and act and be? This is a question
that touches on the whole way in which sex and gender are
understood in our culture. It also relates to the way in which any
challenge to the patriarchal status quo is greeted with fear and
dismay if not outright terror. In this sense it is possible to interpret
these stereotypical characterisations of feminism and feminists
(bearing grudges, unpopular with the boys) as something which is
created right across a range of institutions, precisely as a response
to this threat, and as a clearcut defence of patriarchy — the power of
men over women. If the women who challenge this power, who
question the inevitability of their own subordination and the
‘naturalness’ of their inferiority, are reduced to a group of eccentrics,
then half the battle is won. The threat is deflected and diluted —
what woman in her right mind would want to join with this mob? Yet
such unrelenting ridicule suggests something deeper. The fears,
perhaps, of a patriarchy which is somehow beginning to lose its
grasp, but doesn't know quite where to put the pressure on. The
easiest way to deal with it is to hit back wildly, caricature it, trivialise it
. . . and then hope it goes away. This anti-feminist promotional
campaign depends then on transforming some of its representatives,
those women who are no longer captured by suave masculinity, by
machismo and charisma and charm (‘your sex life complications are
not my fascination’ as the song by Grace Jones puts it), into
‘unfeminine’ oddballs, women who are going against nature.
 The problem for us is that these vindictive images do feed into
popular (mis)conception, they do penetrate consciousness and
create prejudices. Two recent examples of this will suffice. At an
interview for a job, one gentleman thought he was paying me a
compliment: ‘You don't look like someone who bears grudges,’ he
said, ‘do you have a happy personal life, are you a’ (nervous cough)
‘a, women's libber?’ Even more obvious was the uproar surrounding
newsreader Anna Ford's claim that ‘body fascism’ was virulent in
television and ensured that only young and attractive women got
jobs and succeeded, where such criteria simply were not relevant for
men. The popular press took this comment, made at a Women In
The Media conference, as an insult to men and to themselves as
indeed it was intended. They responded in terms of ‘how dare she
bite the hand that feeds her’, and then resorted to suggesting that
‘she's got a nerve to speak’, and then the usual, ‘She's got extremely
large hands and a big bottom.’ So she's not really so ‘feminine’ after
all! Later that week on television Robert Robinson mocked her,
‘Whatever next?’ he said, ‘Plain women reading the news!’
But there is something more to this than just a childish ritual
exchange of insults. For so many years any kind of media
recognition, any kind of visual publicity, has been the epitome of
success for a woman. ‘Getting your picture in the paper’; whether as
actress, model, television presenter or pop singer, the result has
been the same. Made-to-measure images, glamour, smiles and
‘thank you very much, I owe this all to my manager, my producer, or
to the talent scout who saw me on “Opportunity Knocks” ‘, and so on.
Women have been so flattered to succeed in these spheres that they
have rarely dared to voice any complaints that they may have. Until
recently they haven't ever publicly challenged the authority which
has kept them in their places and which continually reminds them
that there is always a large army of eager young women just dying to
take their place. So when one of these figures does articulate her
exasperation, not only is she risking her career, she is also directly
accusing all those men who work around her. And she can be
assured of having a far from easy future with them. Fortunately,
she's not quite alone. The fact that Anna Ford made these
statements at a Women In The Media conference, and that she has
the support of this group behind her, is evidence enough of this. So
perhaps patriarchy, in this case the media, really does have
something to fear. For example, the tabloids may resist it wherever
they can, but women's magazines have changed. They have been
influenced by ideas from the Women's Movement and they no longer
depict women as only housewives, only dolly birds. Controversial
issues, previously avoided by magazines like Woman and Woman's
Own, can now be discussed with some frankness. Careers are
recognised as worthwhile and important, and there is life beyond
House and Gardens. Magazines like Cosmopolitan are clearly not
feminist, but at least they have jettisoned completely the idea that
happiness for a woman lies only in housework and childcare. Of
course, what they offer instead, the new Superwoman, is as much a
myth as any other. Some women argue that this is just another male
fantasy, a view of women who are ever-available sexually and
unhampered by domestic responsibility. Quite true, except that it at
least provides its readers with the idea that there are alternatives
and that marriage and settling down are not the only possibility for
women. Recent issues have carried strongly feminist pieces written
by increasingly sympathetic women journalists, so perhaps the rest
of the mass media has good reason to flex its patriarchal muscles.

Our aim in putting together this collection is not so much to create

new and feminist myths, but rather to demolish those which flourish
so freely in everyday life. We want to unmask the fears they hide,
and expose their rationale. But in carrying out this work we will not
be suggesting that seeing through such representations and
understanding their basis is enough to rid ourselves of them.
Patriarchy is about power relations and never in history has power
been redistributed without a bitter struggle. Even trying to live apart
from, and in opposition to, society's myths about women is hard, to
say the least. This is because these notions have, over history,
become built into the very fabric, the cement, of Western society.
They provide people with ‘basic common sense’. When real life
seems a great deal less reliable, less certain, these values are
referred to for support: ‘It's only natural after all isn't it?’ The saying ‘a
woman's place is in the home’, plays a similar kind of role as the
Royal Family or Hollywood movies. Happy families and happy
endings. Until, that is, housework becomes insufferably boring, the
baby's cries intolerably endless, and the husband's absence
(football, work, drinking, friends) simply unacceptable. Only then
does the myth begin to crumble, the glamour fade and the
resentment mount.
It is our belief that alternative myths have little to offer in terms of
finding ways of struggling against women's oppression. Myths are
circular, they foreclose discussion because they're complete,
coherent and polished. They take the easiest route to the simplest
answer. One of the most familiar and damaging to women goes
something like this: women are physically weaker than men; they
bear children and are responsible for feeding them; men have
always been aggressive; they have provided for their families whilst
the women have stayed at home and looked after the young. This
pattern has been seen to serve as the very basis of society, from the
earliest stages onwards. It is therefore natural and consequently
right. (A crude summary of a well-worn argument.) Biology is destiny,
whisper these myths, just below the surface. ‘Really?’ we ask. Yet if
women are so weak how come they have for centuries managed to
combine back-breaking hard work (tedious and repetitive — carrying
water, fuel, washing, scrubbing, cleaning) with childcare, child
education, with care of the family, the husband, with servicing him
and his needs, with paid work in factory, office, or shop? If women
really were that weak then the species would have died out centuries
ago, and anybody who needs further convincing of women's strength
need look no further than those first-hand accounts collected in
Sheila Rowbotham's and Jean McCrindle's book, Dutiful Daughters.
Of course, other factors do come into play. Rich, middle-class
women have not had to work and struggle just to make ends meet in
this way. Biology, far from being a static quality, in fact seems to be
an exceptionally elastic quantity. Or maybe it's just more accurate to
recognise that biology is so tightly tied up with culture and its
oppressions that it's virtually impossible to separate the two. We
learn to become girls; we learn femininity just as boys learn to be
men. And society invests a great deal of energy in ensuring that
these processes don't go wrong.
If we're not interested in feminist mythology, where does the
adventure start? We can't promise that struggling for women's rights
is the stuff that glamorous movies are made of. So where does the
adventure come into it? In fact we use the word loosely. Adventure is
founded on initial confusion, even fear. It demands enterprise and
ingenuity. It necessitates tactics and manoeuvres. Unlike myths,
adventures are open-ended, there are no foregone conclusions. We
won't be offering a step-by-step guide to the feminist ‘Good Life’. We
prefer to deal with clues, suggestions and ideas, all of which are
based on a number of basic assumptions. First, that girls and young
women are capable of a great deal more than they're ever allowed to
imagine (this being one of the ways in which they are oppressed).
Second, that they need space and autonomy from men to work out
the hows, whys, and wherefores of this situation, and third, that this
process of exploration and discovery can be fun. Challenging
authority, questioning what seem to be God-given rights and
undermining patriarchy can bring about change, they can also be
rewarding and exciting experiences. And just like a good story, when
the picture falls into place, the relief is great, it makes you smile.
There is, however, a limit to the usefulness of the analogy.
Everyday life goes on where fiction ends, and the adventure is
invariably partly of the girl's or woman's own making. This book, a
collection of pieces written from different feminist perspectives,
cannot possibly provide all the clues, never mind answer all the
questions. And this is how we want it. We offer neither a manifesto
nor a set of demands or statements and we would be doing an
injustice to the Women's Movement in trying to summarise all its
aims, all its points of tension. As a result, this introduction is itself a
little unconventional. What we want to do is actively to apply one of
the central tenets of feminism. The claim that the personal is
political. We will try to interlace parts of our own personal histories
with this particular project on adolescence, with our work outside this
volume and with our commitment to the pieces inside it. We'll
describe how and why the book came about and what kind of
problems are inevitably experienced in such an attempt. And we'll try
to deal, briefly, with some of those issues which seem to us to be of
fundamental importance to women. What we'll hopefully avoid is the
patronising attitude often adopted by people writing about
adolescence. We don't consider ourselves grown up — wise and
adult as the word is commonly meant. This is because ‘growing up’,
as it is presented to girls, is about becoming settled in outlook, stable
in disposition. ‘Maybe some day you'll get those silly ideas out of
your head,’ my mother used to say. But growing up for girls is little
more than preparation for growing old prematurely. Real life is more
complicated than the stages and the phases which psychologists so
willingly label us with. Getting into the Women's Movement can
mean learning to reinterpret our past as well as re-assess our
present. It means holding onto some images and abandoning others,
even if we still remain complex and possibly muddled persons.
Amidst such speculation and hesitation, what can we hope for?
First, a realisation that women and girls can work together, that they
can overcome the obstacles which society puts in their way and
which aim at keeping them apart. Mutual help and support have
characterised women's culture for centuries, even though its official
history is only beginning to be written. Second, a confidence that has
to be fought for. Without seeing everything in society as a conspiracy
against women, it is none the less easy to see that it hasn't been in
society's and men's interests for girls to be frank and outspoken
about their needs, their desires; about what they want and what they
can do (particularly in times of high youth unemployment — but more
on this later). Third, access to knowledge and information and to
those channels which encourage such exchange in a free and
democratic way. We need to know more about other women's
situations, more about our rights, about contraception, about power
and politics and even about nuclear power. We have to know what
we need before we can hope to find ways of getting it. Maybe this is
where a new kind of adventure starts.
Angela Mc Robbie

What is feminism?

Considering that this is obviously a crucial question for a book like

this, it seems a bit odd to say that we don't really know the answer.
But then you've already been warned that this book is about clues
and questions, not answers. Feminism is a word you may be familiar
with, though feminists are more often called, or rather put down, as
‘women's libbers’ — or something even less polite. The image of
‘women's libbers’ that we all get from the media, and from most other
people, tends to be of ‘bra burning’, ugly (or at least unattractive),
screaming women who only cause trouble and make a fuss over
nothing because they can't get a man. Hopefully, it will be clear from
this book that in fact feminism is about women, all women; it's about
the way we live our lives, the things that happen to us and the things
we make happen, being able to talk together, act together, and
support each other. It's not about what you look like, how you have
your hair cut, whether you wear Doc Martins or high heels, dresses
or trousers. It is about having choices, about not having to wear high
heels because you're small, not having to wear flat shoes because
you're tall. Feminism is about being who you want to be — and
finding out who you are in the first place.
 Some of us find the idea of women's liberation frightening, off-
putting, fascinating, exciting, intimidating. None of us felt confident
about it when we first got involved. For young women it's probably
more difficult. Have you ever sat in a meeting, or in a room full of
older women, and not known what they were talking about? Or been
bored out of your head? Or felt out of it because they didn't notice
you? Or felt intimidated because it seemed as if everyone but you
understands — about childbirth, marriage, sex, children,
relationships? Feminism can often seem as if it's for older women,
it's got nothing to do with your life.
There is one basic reason why, although most of us have felt like
this at some time, this can't be the case. There's no single feminism.
Because feminism is about all women, and for all women, it means
different things to all of us. It takes different forms, it's concerned
about different things. If you're having a relationship with a man, the
most important thing to you could be getting hold of decent
contraception. If you're pregnant, it could be getting an abortion, or
good ante-natal care. If you have kids, it could be nurseries or
childcare. If you go to a youth club, it could be getting a go on the
pool table, or getting events or space just for girls. If you're at school,
it could be learning woodwork or learning how to cook for yourself —
not always for a family. If you're black, it could be stopping the school
from treating you as less important than the white girls. If you're
married, it could be forcing people to see you in your own right. If
you're a lesbian, it could be stopping other people from always
assuming you're heterosexual, being able to say you're not. If you're
low paid, it could be equal pay and training that matter most to you.
We're all in very different situations and at every point in our lives our
priorities, the issues that affect us most, are different too. But we also
care about other women, and know that every struggle by any group
of women makes us all stronger. So we've got the right to demand
support and to get it — something that young women need to fight
for, even from other women. We do think that young women and
older women can work together, but it has to be on your terms, since
girls often have different needs and are seen as less ‘grown up’ than
adult women, with fewer rights and never taken seriously. I
remember adolescence as probably the most difficult period of my
life so far, not because I was disturbed, but because of boys,
parents, teachers!
 On top of all this, if you read through the lines in this book, you'll
see that the different chapters, though they're all written by feminists,
have different perspectives. The fact that we're all women doesn't
mean we agree with each other all the time. So different chapters will
be arguing different things. Within the WLM (Women's Liberation
Movement) there are lots of different politics and women put their
energy and time into the areas that they see as the most important,
or relevant, to them. We have big disagreements, not to mention
rows. Women aren't nice to each other all the time! Our ideas can be
so different that it can make it difficult, or impossible, to always work
together. And feminists outside of the WLM may have different ideas
again. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't listen to each other, or
that we aren't all fighting for the same thing. The however-many
thousands of women that are involved in the WLM in this country
(and there are millions more, in every country of the world) obviously
don't agree on how to end women's oppression, or exactly what kind
of society we want to build. The WLM is a movement, not a political
party or a social set, precisely because it can encompass so many
different political positions. The movement has broad aims — not a
political programme — and what we have in common is that we all
want women's liberation, we all want changes, and we all want
choices.
For all of us, our ideas come from who we know, what we read,
what we see and listen to. We aren't born with ready-made ideas; we
learn them, develop them, adapt them. But some ideas are around a
lot more than others; we hear them more often, we look at images of
them more often — and ideas are catching. Not many of us ‘catch’
the ideas of feminism, because they're just not around as much.
We're trying to spread the germs and hoping you catch them! Or at
least know they're there. How many other books, magazines and
films are spreading the feminist germs? How many magazines have
you read recently that discuss feminism seriously or
sympathetically? How many people do you know who think women's
liberation is important, or a good idea? How many television
programmes and advertisements show women as strong, positive,
independent, making decisions for themselves? Then again, how
many magazines only talk about how to get boyfriends, which
clothes and make-up styles are ‘in’, what you should look like? How
many people have you heard say women's libbers are making a fuss
over nothing, going too far? How many times have you seen Page 3
staring at you op the bus?
One reason, we all wrote this book is because we think that the
ideas of feminism — the differences as well as the similarities —
should be around and available — in schools, colleges, techs,
because if you're going to say that feminists are talking rubbish, at
least you should know what we actually do say. But we also wanted
to show that you don't have to believe any one thing to be a feminist,
there's no signing on the dotted line, that if the issue is choice then
we also have to be free to choose our own ideas. And if it's about all
women, then it's also about listening to each other and learning. Not
learning the right answers, but learning that there aren't any — not
until we make them.
Most of us don't really get the chance to make up our own minds
because we don't get all the sides of the story, especially not the
sides that threaten the people who want to make up our minds for
us. The mass media, the books you read, the films and television
programmes you watch are usually written, produced and controlled
by men. Feminists are women and we have the other side of the
story. Not only that, but feminism's story has different sides — and
you might not have heard all, or even any, of them before. Being a
feminist is a bit like washing out your ears, opening your eyes, and
telling everyone else to shut up for a bit. Above all, it's about taking
risks, being open to new ideas, being prepared to explore new
possibilities, discovering what women's lives are like, what your life
is like, and what you haven't recognised in yourself. Women's
oppression is normal, it's ‘common sense’ that women can't walk
down the road at night alone, need a man for protection,
automatically want marriage, children and a ‘home of their own’. It's
only if we start to make it not normal, not make sense, ask
questions, that we start to find out what women are and can be. So
it's time to decide what kind of women you want to be, what options
are open, it's time to give yourself space — forget the washing up
and the babysitting and think what you want to do. Taking risks and
asking questions is dangerous, but it can also be exciting and fun.
Young women spend most of their lives having decisions made for
them. Maybe it's time for you to make a change for yourselves.
Trisha McCabe

Politics, personal life and publishing

How is a book like this produced? We think it's worth trying to

answer this question in some detail. Why? Because conventionally
the whole process of writing books, researching and publishing is
presented as something which is above most people's heads, a
mystified activity requiring mysterious skills. Typically, you have to be
exceptionally clever, talented, or at least highly educated before you
can put pen to paper with any hope of seeing what you write appear
in print. Likewise, writing is seen as an intensely personal and
isolated activity, carried out in solitude and demanding gifts like
inspiration, insight, style, even genius.
 Of course, writing and publishing do demand skills and abilities
which have to be learnt and can take several years to master. And
writing does tend to be something done alone, although, (as two of
our chapters here show), this need not necessarily be the case. Our
aim in this short section is to normalise the whole procedure and
hopefully to make it more accessible to other women and girls. We'll
describe the background to this particular collection, the way it was
conceptualised, the problems we encountered and the kinds of
people who have contributed to it. We will not be saying that any of
these processes was straightforward or easy; nor will we be
suggesting that everyone can or should want, automatically, to do
this kind of work. The point is that discussing, collaborating and
working collectively are especially important for women. It certainly
doesn't save time; frequently it would be quicker to work alone — its
advantages are possibly less immediately visible and more long-term
in effect. Ideally, it would mean that more women and girls have
more self-confidence about writing and that, in a sphere very much
dominated by men, they too would have the pleasure of seeing their
texts available and on the counters.
It is certainly the case that men have dominated the literary world,
but historically, writing (everything from novels to love-letters) has
played a vital role in women's culture — as has reading. We want to
suggest that the value that women have, through the ages, placed
on these forms is very much worth holding on to and actively
encouraging. As Gill Frith suggests in her article, becoming aware of
women's oppression demands that we learn anew ‘how to read’.
Learning also anew ‘how to write’ and how to make women's writing
as widely available as possible is a necessary part of this
‘consciousness raising’. But still there are limits to the kinds of
consciousness raising that we as white women have been involved
in, be it talking, reading or writing.
One of the most difficult areas in writing a book like this for girls is
that in our society we tend to immediately think of white girls. To try
to counteract this racism we have to be careful not to fall into adding
a token chapter about black girls. In some ways, this is what we've
done, and we are aware of the problems this raises. The chapter by
Pratibha and Val in fact challenges lots of the assumptions that we,
and all white people in a racist society, make about black women. I
found that chapter challenging and threatening to read; it was hard
work. It seems likely that most white readers will feel the same,
because the article shows how, as white people, we benefit from
racism, however much we may try to be anti-racist. In many ways
this is the only type of chapter that could have been written in a book
that is predominantly about white girls. Black girls can't just be added
on as a footnote or an appendix, as a special case. It's more
important to have a chapter like this because it makes clear an
unwritten assumption, which is that the other chapters are, in fact,
about white girls. I think that Pratibha's and Val's chapter shows us
how the rest of the book should be read; it indicates that we, as
white women, have to be aware that girls or women ‘in general’ in
fact means white girls and women. It makes us aware of the
insidious ways in which racism operates, by almost making black
girls invisible — or at least masking the fact that the other chapters
are about whites. As I said before, reading that chapter is hard work
for white women — though for black girls reading this book it's
probably a breath of fresh air — and it's difficult not to take it as a
personal criticism of us as white women. But then again, maybe it's
about time that we did take it personally. Racism is our problem and
we have to start making changes.
Originally, the idea was that this book would comprise of a set of
readings. These would be chosen from already existing feminist
work, particularly that which dealt with adolescence. But after a few
informal conversations we began to realise that there was a great
deal of new work on girls in the pipeline, work which we could
publish for the first time and which would bring completely fresh
perspectives to the subject. We immediately set about
commissioning pieces. This we did in an admittedly haphazard way,
not advisable in retrospect, but fortunately not too disastrous. The
women we discovered were willing to contribute were mostly
researchers, but they did include an ex-secretary, a number of
teachers, youth workers, and a German social worker. Altogether,
this now seemed a more exciting project than scanning years of
women's literature for relevant passages.
After we worked out exactly who would be contributing, two all-day
sessions were organised and were attended by most of the writers.
In the first session basic guidelines for writing were discussed — like
clarity and accessibility, and several women summarised the main
points they would be raising in their papers. Some months later the
group met again, this time to listen to draft versions of completed
contributions and to iron out problems that had arisen on the way.
Next came the slow process of waiting for chapters to come in —
discussing them, editing them, sending them back for comment,
suggesting rewrites and so on. At the same time we had to
collaborate with the women who had undertaken to be responsible
for the illustration, an important dimension in a hopefully ‘popular’
book like this. Each chapter, when completed, had to be sent out to
an artist, and if the writing was delayed then so, in turn, was the
artist and if when it did arrive the artist was already busy then it had
to wait. Only three chapters, all of which were possibly the most
difficult to write, demanded a lot of discussion and rewriting and this
went on, quite literally, for weeks. It meant contributors coming from
London and Sheffield to Birmingham on at least five different
occasions. On top of this two chapters got lost in the post, one on
the way from Jamaica, the other, less exotically, somewhere
between Sheffield and Birmingham! Eventually we got them all to the
typist and to the illustrators. It has taken almost eighteen months,
exactly a year longer than we had anticipated. At the risk of sounding
melodramatic, organising this book has given us sleepless nights,
vast telephone bills, and countless migraines (more of an ordeal than
a gripping adventure). At the risk of sounding clichéd, we still think it
was worth it.
Most books include, either in the foreword or else in the
introduction, some kind of personal dedication to the people who
have helped on the sidelines, who have given advice, emotional
support, and friendship. They are usually mentioned fleetingly and,
when the books in question are written by men, these shadowy
figures are most often wives or girlfriends. Instead of simply
reproducing this pattern, we want to show just how doing this work
has invaded our personal lives. The people we have depended on
know this and it would be little more than tokenism to ‘name’ them.
As editors, our role has obviously been more demanding, more
involved, but as a product, the book has been the result of a whole
set of working relations, some harmonious, some stormy. Inevitably,
friends have been involved in all the debates, they have read the
chapters, discussed them and helped to solve some seemingly
intractable political problems.
One such weighty problem related to the whole question of
editorship, and what it demonstrated conclusively to us was the
extent to which any purely neutral ‘professional’ definitions of this
role are blown apart when the personal politics of the Women's
Movement are involved. Traditionally, the task of the editor is quite
clear — to commission articles and maintain a balance between
taking risks and guaranteeing ‘good copy’ on time. Certainly, the job
doesn't end there, but when there is an issue at stake, the focus is
generally on the text or the script itself. But while clarity, good writing,
the flow of the argument and the overall coherence of the piece are
vital, regardless of politics, external issues do intervene when the
book comes out of the Women's Movement.
One of us commissioned a chapter, yet it does not appear in this
volume. There is no point in rehearsing all the ins and outs of the
arguments which resulted in this decision. This simply isn't the place
to dwell on the various positions represented within feminism; it's
sufficient to say that one of us wanted to publish it, the other didn't. A
battle raged for at least six weeks until it was clear that one of us had
to concede.
It would be easy to say, ‘Well, we learn by our mistakes.’ Or that
we should have been more systematic or rigorous about how we
commissioned, or that if we had discussed our differences in relation
to this chapter earlier . . . and so on.
Yet even the most watertight set of editorial principles couldn't
legislate against issues like this emerging. Nor could they guarantee
that they would be any less stubborn. Whatever the decision, one of
us was bound to feel a little jaded. Perhaps all that can be said is
that feminism can't and doesn't (nor should it) protect us from
conflicts and disagreements between women. It would be both
unrealistic and absurdly romantic to expect anything else. The
adventure of feminism may be embarked upon with wildly optimistic
expectations, but the exhilaration shouldn't blind us to the way in
which it can at times tear us apart. Sisterliness and solidarity would
be meaningless if they implied that we had to stop disagreeing with
each other.
What we have clearly agreed about is who the book is aimed at
and the importance of keeping this readership firmly in view
throughout our quarrels. Once again, we started out with fairly
inflated notions of our readership. In fact, girls aren't often
encouraged to read ‘seriously’ unless it's for ‘O’ or ‘A’ levels, so it
was probably a little unrealistic of us to imagine hordes of girls
fighting to get their hands on a copy of Adventure Story. It is rare to
come across books quite unprompted; usually it's a matter of
someone telling you about Wuthering Heights or The Joys of Sex.
Girls do tell each other about books, but they, in turn, are ‘turned on
to them’ by groups as divergent as elder sisters, grandmothers,
youth workers, teachers, even boyfriends, though we hope in this
case to bypass this particular tradition. The point is that all sorts of
influences act to push girls in one direction or the other and books
don't just magically appear in front of them from nowhere. Realising
this, we tried to stretch out our ‘catchment area’ to include women
working with girls. Teachers, mothers, social workers and youth
workers. We also hope that it will have some relevance to women
returning to education after years of housework and child care. As
Dorothy Hobson's chapter shows, adolescence is an important
turning point in most women's lives and is very definitely
remembered as such. For the housewives in her sample, it
represented their last taste of freedom, adventure and warm
friendship. If our book and its various contents can also speak to
women like these, perhaps attending evening classes in sociology or
modern studies, then we will be more than thrilled.
What all this indicates is that, like it or not, we are in the business
of education. But this doesn't just mean studying in the narrow sense
to pass exams, it means learning in a much broader way to
understand how society works and what it does to women. To have
the confidence to challenge we must possess knowledge as well as
conviction.
Angela Mc Robbie
Are women really oppressed?

We talk about women's oppression a lot in this book, but what do we

mean, exactly? It's actually a lot more difficult to recognise
oppression than it is to assume that it doesn't really exist. One of the
reasons for this is that women's oppression is ‘normal’, ‘natural’. But
is it? Is it normal for men to rape women? To batter women? To kill
women? Violence is one issue that clears up the question of whether
women are really oppressed or not. For me, personally, starting to
see my own fears of the dark, my fears about walking down the
street at night, of spending the night alone in the house, as
something that isn't just personal has been both scary and
confidence-building. Scary because it's ‘common sense’ that women
generally shouldn't be out alone at night, wear hemlines that are too
high or necklines that are too low, lead men on, or accept lifts from
strangers; otherwise we ask for it — don't we? Scary because
questioning common sense always is. Scary because it means that
men can go where they want, when they want, wear what they want
to and not worry about how to get home. They can do what they
want, too, and we all know that men are aggressive, easily aroused
and potentially violent. That is how they are taught to be.
Confidence-building because I know now that it doesn't have to be
like that, women don't just have to put up with it and ‘be careful’. Is it
natural for one half of the population to have to always ‘be careful’
because of the other half?
Of course, not all men rape women, so is it really a question of
women being oppressed by men? Most men are nice men,
especially the ones you know, they wouldn't do anything like that. So
it's not men — just some men. But what do you do if you're on your
way home at night and a man, or a group of lads, are walking
towards you? Cross the road? Walk faster? Grit your teeth and feel
terrified? Just ignore them — but feel a bit scared none the less? It
doesn't really matter whether he's a ‘nice man’ or not, because in
that situation you can't tell. Every man you meet is someone to be
scared of just because he's a man. As long as some men do attack
women, then every woman has to be frightened of, or at least wary
of, every man. Is that natural? But not every man — it's OK if you
know him, the boyfriend you rely on to walk you home, your friend's
dad who picks you both up from a party. Unfortunately, though we all
tell ourselves that, most rapes are actually committed by someone
you know. Your boyfriend, husband, next-door neighbour, workmates
or classmates — they are all more likely to attack you than a
stranger who leaps out in the dark. Is that natural?
So what do we do? The short answer is usually not so much as
we'd like to. We don't tend to question the fact that parents,
boyfriends, husbands put limits on our freedom, stop us doing things
that we might otherwise like to do because of their fear that we'll be
attacked, assaulted or abused by other men! It sounds odd putting it
like that, but it's not because of other women is it? So one half of the
population, men, keeps the other half, women, scared, dependent on
other people, and without the freedom to even walk down the street
and feel safe. Is that natural?
But then isn't it all biological after all? Men are stronger than
women and more into sex — they get frustrated easily (or at least
some of them do) and women are easy prey. Well, for a start I don't
think rape is about sex, as such. If sex is about caring about another
person, and wanting to give them pleasure, getting pleasure from
that person — in other words, mutual — then violently attacking
someone, enjoying terrifying and humiliating them, often beating
them up, seems the opposite of sex to me. Rape is about power and
violence, not biological differences. Just because someone has a
penis, and someone else a vagina, does that mean that it's ‘natural’
for the man to want to stick it into a woman, any woman, against her
will? And physically and psychologically destroy her as a person? Is
it natural for men to see women as a hole rather than a human
being? Is it natural that, with a whole body, women are actually
treated as a walking vagina, one part of our body defining our whole
being?
All this may seem a bit extreme, but it doesn't seem like that to me
any more. One reason for this is that I've been learning self-defence
for the last eighteen months, and it's made a big difference to my life.
It's forced me, and the other women in the class, to recognise that
we are scared, that women from six months old to ninety years old
get raped, that most women are attacked or raped at least once in
our lives, that it can and does happen to any of us (and the age
range in the class I go to is from twelve to sixty) and that we have to
do something about it for ourselves. I can't afford a car (though that
doesn't necessarily make you safe), I do have to be out after dark, I
don't want to have to rely on a man to walk me home — and that's
not safe either — and I don't live with a man. So I'm scared; at night,
outside, and at home. Even during the day sometimes! Because I've
also learnt that rapes don't just happen after dark, or outside your
own home.
You could say that doing self-defence has made me paranoid. I
sometimes think that myself, because what's actually happened is
that I've been made more aware of things that I'd really rather not
have known about. But I've also learnt that I have the right to say no,
that it's not OK for men to hassle me, that my body belongs to me
and no one else. I've also taught self-defence to girls and seen
similar things happen. Girls who have been raped, whose friends got
attacked on the way home from school, who've been frightened by
flashers or who are ‘just’ scared. Learning to fight back means
developing a sense of your own personal space that belongs to you;
it makes it possible to see that men in the street, fathers and
brothers and boyfriends don't automatically have the right to boss
you, grab you, hassle you. Men haven't got the right to persuade you
to go further than you want to. They don't have the right to touch you
unless you want to touch them. And other people don't have the right
to say ‘What did you expect?’ because you should expect everyone
to respect your body. And that means you must be able to respect it
yourself.
I'm still scared — and I feel angry because I no longer accept it as
‘just natural’. I don't want to spend the rest of my life being scared if I
meet a man after dark. If I live alone, I don't want to wait around at
parties for someone to walk home with when really I just want to go. I
don't want to go on being careful about where I live, whether it's
secure, can I afford a telephone just in case? I don't believe that any
woman has never experienced this kind of fear. I don't believe any
man knows what it's like to live with that fear. None of us can stop
being scared until men stop being aggressive and seeing women as
available any time for whatever they — the men — want.
Action

Do we have to put up with these limits on our freedom? With not

being able to enjoy leisure in the same way as boys — not being
able to explore new places, new parts of the city, stay out late, afford
a night out if you need a taxi at the end of it? If your answer to that is
no, then it's important to recognise that the action we can take is
limited. It would be totally irresponsible to say that if you do self-
defence you can wander the streets at will in safety. After all, being
frightened is probably the biggest block to being able to fight back,
not physical strength or lack of techniques. And it's not much fun
being scared and maybe having to fight just so that you can say
you're independent. Self-defence is something of a solution for
individual women; maybe you should ask for classes at school,
instead of PE (after all jumping over horses or whatever isn't
something you'll need to know how to do in everyday life — though
being fit is). Or why not advertise for a woman to teach a class in
your area? We have to rely on each other — check out your local
women's centre or ask at a martial arts club if anyone (preferably a
woman, they understand what you need to know better) could teach
a class. Demonstrating or marching against rape can also help, it
makes us feel stronger and brings violence against women to the
attention of other people. Women throughout the country have
organised ‘Reclaim the Night’ marches to protest against rape and
assault, and the feeling of walking down the street at night, with lots
of other women carrying torches, shouting, being angry and having a
good time, is hard to describe. Where I live, we marched one night
and all the kerb crawlers (men who follow you around in their cars —
even during the day!) had to turn around and get away fast, they
were scared by the sight of so many women. It makes a change; you
don't feel scared. It also makes you realise how frightened you are
the rest of the time, but in a way that shows you that we don't have
to go on accepting our fear, we can protest and show that we're
angry. Women who are raped, whose husbands or boyfriends beat
them up, even women who are frightened of rape or are threatened
with violence aren't allowed to do what they want to. They aren't
equal to men because their freedom is limited by men. I think this
applies to all of us, if we're all threatened with violence at some
point, and scared at others. None of us are as free as men, nor are
we ever completely safe. So what is oppression? One group of
people denying another group freedom — the same freedom as
themselves. It seems to me that not having the freedom to control
your own body and therefore your own life is a pretty fundamental
and everyday form of oppression. Why should we put up with it? I
can't think of one good reason. I can think of every reason not to.

Practical hints

There's not a lot I can say on paper, as the main advantage women
who fight back have is that men don't expect us to. Nevertheless, all
the things our mothers told us to carry at night are useful. Anything
you can use as a weapon is important and worth having handy.
Attract attention if you are attacked. Shouting rape won't, in our
experience, help — shouting fire or throwing something at a window
might. Practise screaming — yes, really, because women tend to
freeze when they're attacked and can't get any sound out at all. If
you're walking alone and see another woman, or other women, ask
to walk with them — it doesn't matter if you don't know them, they'll
understand. Wearing shoes you can run in, or taking off high heels to
run, throwing anything you're carrying at him, and keeping fairly fit
are all important. If you do get raped and want to report it, take a
friend to the police station, do it straight away. Police aren't always
sympathetic and women are more often ‘put on trial’ for rape than
rapists are. You can also ring a Rape Crisis Centre for advice,
someone to talk to or someone to go with you to the police. Even in
this case you may still have to fight for your rights; being confident
about having the right to say no in the first place makes this a lot
easier.
‘However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means
no.’
This may be just a slogan — but if we believe it ourselves we've
made a start in making it a reality.
Trisha McCabe

Sixth-form semi-feminism: poetry, punk and promiscuity

Quite a large amount of space in this book is devoted to the setting

up of two kinds of arguments. One of these is about the extent to
which girls and young women are hard done by, in the school, in the
family, by the mass media, in job opportunities and in love and
romance. The concern of the writers is to demonstrate vividly the
kind of discrimination and oppression which is experienced every
day in a multiplicity of ways. And the objective? To make this kind of
account available, to promote discussion, and to help bring about
change; A shared recognition that this is something worth taking
issue about, challenging and actively struggling against. The second
kind of argument is less concrete. It's concerned with this process of
active change. It's suggesting that what happens to girls needn't, and
that, contrary to popular belief, women's subordination is not just
based on ‘human nature’. Reading between the lines, these articles
are making suggestions. Like, for example, start a girls’ magazine!
Put as much emphasis on friendships with girls as those with boys!
Encourage mothers to question their roles in the home! Think about
the positive aspects of breaking with convention. ‘YBA Wife?’ as one
feminist campaign puts it! Importantly, neither of these sets of
arguments want to rob girls of their femininity. Rather, they want girls
to redefine it and claim it as their own, independent of boys. So,
really, it's got nothing to do with washing off the make-up and
throwing away the mascara. More a matter of choice, doing it for
yourself and not doing it if you don't want to.
 In this section I want to shift the focus a little. I want to suggest
that despite all our arguments about what society does to girls,
anyone who works with them knows that they are not the docile,
passive creatures we might well expect them to be. Social attempts
at subduing a considerable proportion of the population, in this
instance girls, are invariably frustrated. Girls (and boys) are not just
human putty, to be moulded into shape at will. Rather, they are parts
of human and social groups; sexes, classes, ethnic groups, cultures
and subcultures, with all the values, attitudes and resistances which
these entail.
They do challenge that which is perceived to be unacceptable,
even if the way in which they challenge is not, perhaps in our view,
the most immediately damaging, the most ‘political’. But every day
girls ‘talk back’ to teachers, to authoritative figures. They don't
always let themselves be pushed around by employers, by families
and by boys. For girls, both the most symbolic and the most concrete
escape from authority is one which the authorities are very well
aware of, so much so that it's officially recognised as a social
problem in its own right, ‘running away from home’. Girls do demand
the right to leisure even if the only place they can find it is in the
school and during school time! When they get married they don't all
become good, loving, wives and conscientious mothers. If they did,
the divorce rate wouldn't be as high as it is. More and more women
are unwilling to put up with the mental and physical bullying which
their husbands often see as part of normal married life. More and
more women are demanding, and perhaps even getting, better,
warmer, and more equal relationships within marriage. Men are
being forced to take notice.
So here I want to single out, for a moment, the girls who do. Not
the girls who have already become ‘young feminists’, but rather
those who experience their gender and its implications in complex
and confusing ways, but who individually and often quite alone are
unwilling to capitulate, who resist the seemingly natural outcome of
their sex in small but obstinate gestures, who are stubbornly
opposed to the assumption that there are a great number of things
girls can't do.
Some years ago I began some research on white working-class
girls — their family lives, their leisure, their sexuality and their career
opportunities. I argued that they didn't just go along with their
prescribed careers as wives and mothers, as underpaid part-time
workers and full-time domestic labourers; rather, that the way they
worked out the often contradictory demands put on them was
extraordinarily complex and complexly subtle. It was full of delaying
mechanisms, so that even if in the end oppression did get the better
of them — and in many ways it did (at a time of increasing youth
unemployment where young unqualified girls are among the most
vulnerable groups), they none the less manipulated the structures
where they could. They didn't expect much of boys and men and if
their romances or marriages ‘didn't work out’ they weren't going to
hang on to him. Nor were they willing to put up with the thought of a
lifetime of drudgery. Of course, even this account drastically
simplifies. What I'm trying to suggest is that the girls were caught in
both a class and a gender trap — so much of what happened to
them was beyond their control — yet they did act upon aspects of
this oppression, they were neither inadequate nor under-socialised
as the text-books would have it. They certainly didn't conform to
middle-class norms; they didn't perform well at school, nor did they
behave ‘like ladies’ in and out of school. But they did use all the
resources they could to voice their disaffiliation. School uniforms,
magazines, pop culture, language, gesture and culture, these were
all part of their armoury of resistance.
What I didn't manage to encompass in my research and what, as
far as I know, has not as yet really been commented on by feminist
writers, is a kind of gender disaffiliation which is nearer both to my
own personal experience and, I suspect, to that of many active
feminists today, and much more difficult to locate and describe
precisely. So I'll start off with some loose comments.
One of the ways in which class domination (at its most crude the
power of those who ‘own’ over those who don't) operates, is to make
escape from one's class destiny difficult if not impossible. The
working-class girl is destined for a working-class career and often
even the greatest amount of resistance to this merely has the effect
of securing it. The more she rebels against the boredom of school
subjects and the authority of the teachers, the more likely is she to
find herself eventually in the most boring kind of job, and dependent
on her husband's wage as hers isn't enough to cover the cost of her
own keep. The result is that girls who do avoid their own particular
class and gender destiny are both unusual and invariably isolated in
their ‘deviance’. Even those who escape by what sociologists call
‘upward mobility’ experience intense feelings of alienation. It's been
shown time and time again that when, under the old grammar school
system, working-class girls made it into the predominantly middle-
class atmosphere of the grammar school, they were most likely to
drop out early and fail academically. Feelings of social inadequacy
overcame and stifled whatever academic interests they had originally
harboured. (One of Dorothy Hobson's interviewees describes this
quite poignantly.)
For middle-class girls, however, the leap into unconventionality,
though often frowned upon, is both financially and ideologically less
traumatic. What I want to suggest is that in the post-war years the
main recruiting grounds for our contemporary ‘bohemias’ — artistic
fringes where unconventional values are celebrated, ‘radical’
alternatives actively pursued, experimental sexuality endorsed — are
the ‘delinquent’ lower-middle-class ends of the old grammar and new
comprehensive schools. And this goes for boys as well as girls. I'm
not suggesting a direct escape route into feminism, more a
meandering path through things like poetry, social issues, even
school drama, which often ends up in a kind of semi-feminism. The
interesting thing is that these are all spheres that traditionally girls
can do well in. And since the early 1960s, state funding of ‘the arts’
has made it possible for some girls to find careers here, in a way that
wouldn't have been possible thirty years ago when post-war
bohemia first raised its head as an ambiguously male adventure.
One which found explicitly masculine expression in writers like Jack
Kerouac and William Burroughs in the United States and, less
exotically, John Osborne in England.
 It's difficult to say how many feminists today embraced this path
through ‘culture’ and ‘bohemia’. Maybe now it seems like an
unnecessary detour, but when I first read Sheila Rowbotham's
Woman's Consciousness, Man's World and her account of finding a
relatively unknown paperback called Protest, an anthology of the
new angry (male) writers, I felt quite thrilled because, some years
later, I too found it remaindered in Woolworth's on my way home
from school. And the ‘Howls’ of protest which it included within its
covers, from Allen Ginsberg's long poem ‘Howl’ to Norman Mailer's
‘The White Negro’ had a similar effect on me. I too was overwhelmed
by the force of the disaffiliation that these essays announced — even
though not one of them was written by a woman. It also made me
question why my school English literature course never got past D.H.
Lawrence. Perhaps importantly, many of my girlfriends at school
were also, in the late 1960s, beginning to question the value of the
‘straight life’. One wrote a school play about Vietnam, others started
surreptitiously to smoke marijuana, some even talked about living
with people rather than getting married! By the early 1970s, in
Glasgow (things always arrived in Glasgow at least five years late),
hippiness had become a full-blown ideology. At that point I don't think
anybody noticed that it was still men who were doing things:
organising events, playing in bands or setting up business as hippy
entrepreneurs. A few women (those considered to be very cool)
dropped out altogether and had babies, but somehow, either
remnants of Catholicism or remnants of our parents’ insistence that
we finish what we started and get some kind of qualification, or
simply a sense of the need to survive economically, kept all my
women friends enrolled in higher education.
My point in documenting this is not to evoke feelings of nostalgia. I
do think that this kind of route was and is both quite typical and
important for the women involved. I can't imagine feeling closer to
anybody than I do to two of these women. Ten years later we are all
feminists, one a playwright, the other studying to be a women's
rights lawyer. Of the rest of this group, all are financially independent
— some have rejected marriage and stable relationships altogether,
they have boyfriends and lovers, own their own flats and are, well,
common-sense feminists. Of course, we have all had the privilege of
(lower) middle-class backgrounds where a career was seen as a
good investment, should your husband run off and leave you, or
even die and leave you a widow. We have all angered our parents,
even grieved them. We have threatened their respectability and
rejected their religious beliefs. They still try to, and do, exert an
influence on our lives. Recently my mother, upset that I didn't want to
send my little girl to a Catholic school, adopted a new tactic in her
repertoire of well-intended emotional blackmail. ‘Even Communists
in France send their children to Catholic schools,’ she said.
Nor do I think all this represents a historical accident — the side-
effects of hippy-trippyness. For a start, it refers to a social
phenomenon which is continually being reproduced. As all teachers
will testify, being ‘into’ poetry and punk, David Bowie and anti-
fashion, being a bit different, not fancying the local heart-throbs, but
definitely fancying the idea of adventure, escape, living in a flat,
drinking coffee and finding people who ‘understand’ — all of these
continue to be rallying points for generations of girls. And some
examples? Well it's always easiest to look at the most immediately
visible figures, those who have ‘made it’ in (and through) precisely
these terms. Kate Bush's lyrics and songs, their yearning, but
explicitly sexual, romanticism; their celebration of the exotic; their
overwhelming literariness (’Wuthering Heights’ of course); Toyah
Willcox's choice of acting roles, from tarty girl in ‘Quadrophenia’ to
Miranda, sensual child, in The Tempest; her schoolgirl shock tactics;
her punk persona. Julie Burchill's vitriolic punk journalism, and her
giveaway autobiographical fragments (an adolescence apparently of
séances and superior self-imposed isolation). Most of all, Patti
Smith's arty poems and rock lyrics; her schoolgirl crushes on
archetypal bohemians; her escape from gender into androgyny, and
her consequent wariness of established feminism. None of these
women are feminists, they frequently even define themselves
against it, yet in many ways they betray all the features of this kind of
semi-feminism I'm trying to describe. They're undoubtedly
individualists, but in a society where, for women to succeed, they
have to struggle against the odds, it's hardly surprising that these
women should resist being categorised, labelled and
compartmentalised and then possibly dismissed. My point in
considering these pop/punk figures is to show how in society at large
and outside official feminism things are and have been changing for
quite some time. Women in the public eye need no longer subscribe
to a wholly traditional and glamorous stereotype. And all of these
women have constructed a style, be it literary or visual, poetic or
musical, which exists quite apart from, and in contradiction to, what
‘nice girls’ are taught to do. One way or another they threaten, and I
can't help but think this is an extremely useful tactic in the long-term
struggle to redefine what it means to be a woman.
Angela Mc Robbie

Women's space

One of the things we've learnt in the Women's Liberation Movement

is that it's crucial to have space for women only, and that we have
the right to meet and talk without men being there. This has always
aroused some hostility, especially from men, who can't understand
why we might not want them there. But we have found it impossible
to talk about us as women, and about how men oppress us and put
us down if they're there. In our society the only women-only spaces
are toilets and bathrooms — if you go to any school or youth club
you'll find girls in there: talking, smoking, putting on make-up, doing
the things they can't do anywhere else. There are no female
equivalents to the men's clubs, pubs, football matches or even the
streets to hang around. When you have a problem at school and
want to talk quietly to your friend about it, where do you go? In a
club, whether it's a youth club or a night club, the toilets are usually
full of women, talking. Women need space to ourselves — men
already have that space. Feminists often have discos for women,
women's bars to go to for a quiet drink with no hassles, meetings
and conferences where men aren't allowed. Why? Because it's
important to know that we don't need men to enjoy ourselves, that
women are interesting people we can get to know much better if their
men aren't around, that if we enjoy dancing, whether it's working out
a disco dance or just moving around, we can do without the lads
laughing at us. And we can talk without having to adapt our
conversation, without having to listen to men going on and ON. Have
you ever noticed how in a mixed group of people the men talk much,
much longer than the women. The other week I was going to work —
it's a half-hour train journey — and this man I didn't know wanted
someone to talk to. I decided to wait and see how long it would take
him to notice that I was just nodding and not saying anything. Half an
hour later, he said, ‘Thanks for the chat, it was nice talking to you!’
What's started to happen relatively recently is that on the one hand,
young women have demanded that space for them too, in schools,
youth clubs and within the WLM, and, on the other hand, women
who work with girls have questioned their own practice, their
attitudes to boys and girls. Women teachers, youth workers, social
workers — and mothers — have found themselves putting more
energy into boys, because they cause more trouble; giving them
more attention because they demand it, offering them more facilities
to keep them occupied. In short, reproducing the same old attitudes
to boys and girls and assuming that the girls are quite happy
because they keep quiet (or quieter). In trying to change that,
feminist teachers, mothers, and youth workers have found that if girls
get space and attention then they'll make demands too, have ideas,
organise and experiment. If you make an effort then girls are just as
interested, and just as interesting as boys.
But young women don't need telling this. Girls in schools have
started girls’ groups, meetings just for girls. They have organised to
get the right to wear trousers to school, just like boys, have
questioned sexism in their lessons, fought for the right to do
woodwork or metal-work and found women teachers who'll help
them to put on plays, write articles and read things about what it's
like being a girl. In youth clubs, young women have demanded
space for themselves, access to pool tables, darts, table tennis,
organised and enjoyed events and activities that are relevant to
them. They've found they can enjoy being just with girls, at girls’
nights, days, weekends, or in girls’ groups — even girls’ clubs!
They've felt able to try out things they would never have done if the
boys were there: self-defence, riding motor bikes, using video and
film — the list is endless. Instead of saying ‘I can't’, girls have found
out that they can, have explored new ideas and opened up new
possibilities for themselves.
In some ways we hope this book will help to do the same thing;
open up ideas and ways of exploring what women are and can be. It
hopefully shows that there is support from other women when young
women want to make changes, and that we can work together. We're
saying that young women have rights too, to their own space and
their own ideas. Our ideas certainly aren't a blueprint, but we hope
they will be a springboard to start from, to jump from. What you do
with the ideas is up to you, whether or how they affect your life is
obviously your decision. However you decide, if you do want to make
changes it's also clear that it's not simple, that sometimes you don't
just have to ask — you have to fight. We think that control over your
own life and space to yourself is something worth fighting for.
Trisha McCabe
Part I

Experience
2 Little women, good wives:
is English good for girls?
Gill Frith
Illustrated by Suzy Varty

I have been teaching English in comprehensive schools (mixed and

single sex) since 1970. I started teaching in what you might call a
spirit of naive optimism — believing that comprehensives were in
themselves the answer to society's ills. I came to realise that the
inequalities (of sex, race and class) which exist outside the school
system also have their effect within the school system; classrooms
are not ‘neutral’ and nor are the subjects that we learn in them.

What has feminism to do with school?

Since the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975, it has been against the law
for schools to discriminate against either sex. The school must offer
equal opportunities for boys and girls. For example, girls must be
allowed to do metalwork and technical drawing; boys must be
allowed to take domestic science and needlework. Is everything all
right now, then?
It isn't quite that simple. In 1979, a Department of Education and
Science survey commented gloomily that:1

equality of opportunity for the sexes had not in practice been easy
to achieve. The choice of subjects still tended to reflect traditional
sex roles, with fewer girls on science courses, more girls on child
development courses. In college ‘linked’ courses, in the 4th and
5th years, the boys largely selected technically based studies,
 while girls were mostly found taking commercial subjects and
courses such as hairdressing.

Why is this still happening? The DES survey concludes that the
reasons are ‘above all, the attitudes and aspirations of parents and
the pupils themselves’. In other words, nothing to do with the school?

Schools are all different, and some schools are much more
sensitive than others to the need for equal opportunities. You'll have
to consider the next points in the light of your own school
experience. Were both sexes given equal treatment? Did differences
in uniform, play areas, punishment, sports activities, make girls and
boys more conscious of the differences between them? Were certain
subjects more likely to be taught by men, and others by women? Did
textbooks or teaching materials give the impression that some
subjects were more appropriate for one particular sex? Were most of
the senior posts in the school held by men? The important point here
is that if the organisation of the school shows differences between
the sexes, students are likely to respond accordingly.
It's not surprising that this should be so. Schools are a product of
their society, and they reflect the values and assumptions of that
society. Teachers, too, are not immune. They are people: they have
themselves, both men and women, been influenced by their
upbringing, and may, consciously or unconsciously, have different
expectations for girls and for boys. Of course, not all teachers are
the same. You may have come across teachers who said quite
openly that they thought women were inferior to men, or who called
girls by their first names and boys by their surnames, or ‘flirted’ with
their students. The effects of this are obvious, but there can be more
subtle distinctions. Teachers may, even without realising it, take it for
granted that girls will do their homework, listen quietly, present their
work neatly; that boys will call out, move from their seats, push each
other, take less trouble in presenting their work. As a teacher, I often
used to gear lessons to the interests of the boys without even
thinking about it; the girls wouldn't make a fuss. When I later tried
consciously to treat all my students equally, I still found it hard.
Teachers, like other people, find it difficult not to be affected by the
assumptions of the world in which we live.
You may feel that there's an argument missing here. Isn't it natural
for girls to be quiet, docile, enjoy dress-making and looking pretty;
natural for boys to like football and fighting and messing about? The
problem is that it's impossible for us to know what is natural and
what isn't. By the time boys and girls reach the secondary school
they have absorbed a barrage of influences from television,
magazines, books, advertisements, friends and relations, all telling
them in hidden and not so hidden ways what is ‘proper’ behaviour for
boys and what is ‘proper’ behaviour for girls. None of us likes to think
that we are not an individual, that we are the product of social
conditioning, and indeed if social conditioning were really that
effective, the differences between girls and boys would be far greater
than they are. But unless we understand how much of our behaviour
is ‘learnt’, we will never really be free to choose for ourselves.
In school, the problem is that in implicitly accepting that there are
different codes of masculine and feminine behaviour, the school
helps to perpetuate those values; it may even assume that the
differences between boys and girls are greater than they really are.
One young teacher on a school trip was extremely surprised to see
girls joining in fights and football games with the boys. He said:2

The amazing thing was that most of the girls were involved, and
girls that I didn't think would be involved in that sort of thing, and in
fact in school would definitely not be involved. . . . They were
mixing with the rest and they didn't want to be left out of it, which I
don't think we find in school so much. The girls don't mind being
left out. They would rather be left to their quiet life, because I think
we have put it across that that is the accepted role of girls in the
school, and it is the boys that have all the fun, and the girls don't
object to it because it is a socially accepted role.

What message, then, do girls receive in school about their socially

accepted role? Do girls learn that it is ‘feminine’ to be quiet,
obedient, hardworking and domesticated? Do boys learn that it is
‘masculine’ to be strong, adventurous, wild and dominating? I am not
suggesting that this is all a villainous plot on the part of schools to
make girls feel inferior. You might think that girls in fact benefit from
some of these assumptions: they are less likely to get into trouble.
Nor do boys always have an easy time of it. As I write, there's a song
on the radio which leads up to the conclusion: ‘Sometimes you have
to fight to be a man.’ What if you don't want to? Boys may not be
happy with their ‘socially accepted role’ either. But there is a
difference: behind the different expectations for boys and girls lies
the assumption that girls will be economically dependent, boys will
be economically independent, that girls will be future wives and
mothers and boys will be workers. It's not surprising, then, that the
subjects they choose reflect this — even though most boys will be
husbands and fathers as well as workers; most girls will be workers
as well as wives and mothers.

English: a subject for girls?

Why worry about English? Surely English is the exception to what I

have been saying: it's a subject which girls are successful at, and
usually enjoy; it's an academic subject which isn't directly connected
with being a wife and mother, a haven, a refuge, where girls can
work with boys on equal terms. At fifth-year level, where English and
maths are compulsory, boys do better at maths, and girls do better at
English; at ‘A’ level, when the subject is optional, the number of girls
taking and passing English ‘A’ level is twice the number of boys.3
What is it about English, though, that appeals to girls — that has
even led to English being seen as a ‘girls” subject? After all, English
is essential for almost any career; it is as important for boys as for
girls. The reasons may go back a long way: to early childhood, when
girls are encouraged to read and draw, rather than run and shout; to
the nineteenth century, when girls were expected to rest, to preserve
their energies, not to ‘overstrain’ themselves. You can see this in the
comments that some people make about English: ‘Every teacher is a
teacher of English.’ ‘You don't do anything in English.’ ‘English is
easy.’
English, then, is seen as an ‘amateur’ subject, connected with
intuition and the emotions; a subject which doesn't involve learning a
‘block of knowledge’, like history, or working things out, as in maths
or science, or making things, as in woodwork. In English, you can
keep your hands clean and your clothes tidy. You don't have to
compete as directly as in other subjects where there are clearly
‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers.
 Also, it's generally accepted that girls find it easier to write essays
than boys do. When a number of examining boards began to move
more and more towards ‘multiple-choice’ questions, (the student is
given several possible ‘answers’ to a question, and asked to tick the
correct one) they found that the boys’ performance suddenly
improved. In subjects where they had been equal, the boys shot
ahead of the girls; in subjects like English language, where girls have
always done much better than boys, multiple-choice questions
closed the gap. When a paper involves written essays, on the other
hand, girls do better.
It is possible that the reasons for this again go back to early
childhood: that, by playing with ‘boys” toys, and helping their fathers
with ‘man's’ jobs, the boys are developing abilities which will be
useful later for science and maths as well as technical subjects. By
playing with dolls, sitting quietly reading or drawing, helping their
mothers, girls are not only paving the way for domestic subjects;
they may also be developing the verbal abilities they will later need
for writing essays. When girls enjoy English, then, are they simply
fitting in with their traditional role, preferring an essentially passive
activity? I shall return to this question later.
Let's get back to the idea of English as a ‘refuge’, where girls can
get on with a subject they enjoy, on equal terms with the boys. How
far is this really true?
What happens in the English classroom does not happen in
isolation. The English classroom is part of the school, and if boys
and girls learn elsewhere that there are different standards for
‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ behaviour, this will affect the way in which
they behave in the classroom, and the way in which their teachers
respond to them. In English, teachers may, often without being
aware of it, have different expectations of the ways in which boys
and girls will approach their subject: that girls will like poetry and
boys won't, that girls will write thorough, careful essays and boys will
be more slap-dash, that girls will listen and boys will answer
questions, that girls will be interested and boys will have to be
persuaded to take an interest.
Let's have a look at how these assumptions may affect what goes
on in the English classroom.

Reading: between the lines

Here are some comments from teachers:4

1 ‘The girls will read anything so I always choose a book that will
interest the boys.’
2 ‘Nearly all the books have male characters because the girls don't
mind reading about males, but the boys won't read about females.’
3 ‘Boys are very particular. They won't have anything to do with
things they consider “sissy” you know. So we read lots of stories
about adventures and spies, that sort of thing.’
4 ‘Well the boys have so much trouble with reading. They find it so
difficult. They don't want to do it. You have to help them and
encourage them all the time.’
 You can compare this with your own experience. Did teachers
choose books more likely to appeal to the boys? If so, how did the
girls feel about it? Does it matter?
This girl thinks it does:5

When we were given our class reading book, the class went in
uproar — the girls did anyway. The book was called The
Goalkeeper's Revenge and, when sifting through it, I saw a
paragraph saying, ‘This book is for boys, about boys. Rugby,
fighting, trolley driving and football.’ That is typical of my school's
attitude on girls — we are classed second, while the boys must
have what suits them.

I think it matters, too: not only because the girls may be bored, and
because it reinforces the idea that certain subjects are more suitable
for boys, but because reading is one of the ways in which we learn
about the outside world, and what sort of behaviour is expected of
us. What do girls learn from their reading?
Once again, it begins in the primary school. Changes are, slowly,
being made here, but many of you will have learnt to read from
books which not only had a strong middle-class bias, but also
presented children and adults in stereotyped sex roles. Peter does
things; Jane watches. Mummy stays in the kitchen and wears an
apron. Daddy goes to work and reads a newspaper.
In the secondary school, if books are chosen to appeal to boys
(and even if they aren't), most of the books that girls read are written
by men. So girls learn about what girls are like, about their
appearance and personality and behaviour and sexuality, through
men's eyes. Let's look at some examples.
In the late 1960s, a small revolution took place in English
textbooks. Suddenly, glossy paperbacks with stories by writers like
Stan Barstow, Alan Sillitoe, Bill Naughton were available, and you
could hear the gusty sighs of relief echoing round staffrooms all
across England. Here at last were stories that were real, were
relevant, stories about working-class life ‘in the raw’, stories to bring
new life into English teaching. New? There was nothing new about
the ideas of male and female behaviour in these stories, however,
unless it was the frankness with which they were expressed.
Stan Barstow's ‘The Desperadoes’,6 for example, tells the story of
a gang of boys, led by Vince. At the beginning of the story the gang
see a girl, Iris, with her boyfriend.

She wore very brief, scarlet shorts which displayed her long,
handsome thighs, and a white high-necked sweater stretched tight
over her large shapely breasts.
Finch was hopping about as though taken bad for a leak and
making little growling noises in his throat.
‘. . . We'll take her pants off an’ make her ride home bareback’,
Finch giggled.
‘Aye’, Vince said, ‘an’ if laughing boy has any objections we'll
carve his initials round his belly button.’

As the story goes on the flavour of sexual violence develops. The

boys go to a strip show, explicitly described, and release their
frustrations by beating up an old man. Vince falls for the girl, who
belongs to a particular male fantasy/stereotype: beautiful, cool,
remote, clever, middle-class, with secret and unpredictable passions.

As they walked along between the parked cars and the wall of the
building Vince stopped and turned her round with his hands on her
shoulders, feeling their smooth warmth through the blouse.
‘Don't get panicky’, he said. ‘I'm just gonna kiss you.’
‘Who's panicky?’ she said as his mouth came down on hers.
She was quiet at first, acquiescent but passive, her mouth cool
and unresponsive under his. Then she parted her lips and put her
arms about him.

The idyll is interrupted by Jackson, the dance-hall bouncer, who

shines his torch on them, calling Vince a ‘mucky little bugger’, just as
Vince is thinking about ‘things like steady courtship, marriage, a little
home with someone to share it and be waiting for him at the end of
the day’.
 The girl, humiliated, disappears; Vince and his mates wait for
Jackson on the hillside to beat him up. Things go wrong; Jackson
seems able to take on the entire gang, and Vince ‘in a kind of daze’
knifes him. The story ends with Vince, standing alone on the hillside
above the dead body of Jackson.
I read this story to a number of groups and thought it was a big
success. Everyone listened intently: if the bell went in the middle,
there was a loud groan. Then one day, when I was reading it, I
realised that beneath the encouraging murmurs of the boys, there
was a deep silence: the embarrassed silence of the girls. At first I
thought they were embarrassed by the explicit ‘sexy bits’, but
gradually I realised that the embarrassment was created by the
whole atmosphere of the story: the linking of sex and violence, the
portrayal of women as sex objects, the contrast between the girl in
the strip-show who is just for sex, and the girl Iris who is for
marriage. In every way, the story created an impenetrable barrier
between boys and girls. The boys may well have been just as
embarrassed and disturbed by this as the girls, but it would have
been more than their lives were worth to admit it. They were
expected to enjoy it.
While this story may be an extreme example, the attitudes it
conveys are present in many other stories frequently used in the
classroom. In Bill Naughton's collection of stories, Late Night on
Watling Street,1 the disrupting influence of women in men's lives is a
theme which runs right through the book. The men are shown as
extremely sexist in their attitudes, exploiting or ignoring their women;
the women are ‘strong’ in the sense that they trick, outwit and make
fools of the men, but because this is seen only through the eyes of
the men they have little individuality and the reader cannot identify
with them. We are invited to laugh at the sexist attitudes of the men,
and to smile ruefully when they get their come-uppance.

I mean I never had to ask for a dance. I used to stroll up to the

corner where all the girls stood in a circle, the cream of the town's
dancers, and I'd run my eye over them, and the one my eye rested
on would come running into the arm of my tight-sleeved, pinstripe,
barrelled jacket. Sometimes in their eagerness two would run out
 to me. If there happened to be a stranger, or one a bit posh, I
might say, ‘Lend us your body, baby’, but no more than that.
(Seeing a Beauty Queen Home)

She was a bit of a drip was old Myra, but absolutely gone on me. If
she hadn't have been I don't suppose I'd have looked on the same
side of the street she was on, let alone take her out. But I'm like
that I am. I can't turn my back on a woman who looks up to me
and thinks I am somebody, even if, what you might say, I can't
bear the sight of her otherwise. I must admit a bit of the old flannel
goes a long way with me, especially if a woman tells me I dress
well. I do like anything like that. (Spiv in Love)

Perhaps the most extraordinary story in this collection is The Little

Welsh Girl. The narrator and his mate, Jimmy, meet Jenny, the little
Welsh girl, in an all-night cafe. She is broke and has nowhere to live;
they feel sorry for her and take her home with them. She stays on,
but there is no sexual relationship. The two men don't ‘fancy’ her;
she dresses badly, and ‘She wasn't a bit like a London girl. She had
this nice rosy sort of skin, all freshified and smooth, but I like women
with pale skin and lots of powder on and plenty of lipstick: it looks
more natural somehow to see a woman done up.’
They buy her clothes and make-up. Gradually, however, Jenny
takes over. She cleans and tidies the flat, until the men feel that the
place is not their own. They decide to get rid of her, and trick her into
leaving. Two years later they meet Jenny again, with an old ‘Toff.

She looked real smashing. She was wearing a lovely little fur coat,
what Jimmy, who's working amongst hides, said was the real
thing. She had on a blouse trimmed with white frilly stuff. And
she'd a nice warm smell of scent and drink and that.

It is clear that Jenny has become a prostitute.

This is how the story ends:

As we was supping our light ales, Jimmy says: ‘We was a couple
of goms, you know. If I'd have known she was going to turn to
brass —’
 ‘Just what I was thinking’, I says. ‘We could have sent her out on
the bash ourselves.’

I'm not saying that stories like this shouldn't be used in the
classroom. In fact, they can be very useful if we can manage to
confront and talk about the issues they raise. We can learn a lot from
seeing how books provide a particular image of ‘the perfect
girlfriend’, the ‘perfect wife’, the behaviour of men and women
towards each other. We can see how the same images appear
outside the classroom, in magazines, films, television programmes,
and about the way this influences our lives. We can think about
whether there are other possibilities: whether people should try to
live up to these images. But how far do the books we read in the
classroom provide an alternative view of women?
There is one other kind of woman in Bill Naughton's stories: the
long-suffering mother, who provides a stable background for her
children. The mother figure appears in plenty of other books to be
found in the classroom. Apparently, there are two kinds of mothers:
the ‘bad’ mother who goes out, drinks, has boyfriends and neglects
her children (to be found in Kes, Zigger-Zagger, A Taste of Honey
and other popular examination texts) and the ‘good’ mother who
stays at home, cooks and cleans. She may be bitter, especially if she
has a husband who drinks, but she is there when she's needed. It is
very rare to find a ‘good’ mother who is seen to have any life of her
own.
Do you think I'm being unfair? In Lord of the Flies, another popular
examination book, there are no girls at all: they are simply invisible,
and this ‘invisibility’ can be seen in subtler forms in other books.
Look back over the books you read at school: in children's adventure
or family stories, how often were the girls the leaders, taking
decisions, being practical, rather than getting emotional or in the
way? In books for older readers, how often did girls appear, not as
girlfriends or wives or mothers, but as people? How often were
female characters shown having conversations which were not about
relationships or babies or appearances?
Perhaps one reason why ‘boarding-school’, ‘ballet’ and ‘pony’
books, so often popular with girls and frowned on by teachers, are so
popular is that, albeit often in very clichéd ways, they do show girls
using their initiative and having varied personalities. In an all-female
society, girls are not seen as sisters or girlfriends: they take
decisions, argue, play tricks on their teachers, succeed in
competitions, get into trouble, have future careers. Maybe Enid
Blyton's books are popular because they do at least show girls
getting involved in adventures, even if she does carefully balance the
‘tomboy’ with the ‘soft’ feminine girl. The tomboy is itself an
interesting conception. It provides identification for girls who want to
run, shout, climb trees, get their hands dirty, but the very name
suggests that the girl is an oddity, like a boy, not a real girl — it is a
temporary aberration, which the girl will ‘grow out of as she gets
older. But at least it provides an acknowledgment that girls are
different: they don't all like the same things, behave in the same
ways.
Does this mean that girls should only read novels written by
women? It isn't as easy as that. A few years ago I started teaching in
an all-girls school, in the halcyon days before the cuts, when we had
money to buy new books, and one day we gleefully realised that the
girls didn't have to plough their way through ancient copies of Shane.
We bought new books, written by women, about girls and women:
books like The Country Girls, The L-Shaped Room, Fifteen, Sam
and Me, Rebecca, London Morning. There were some real
advantages. The girls loved the books: we had considerable trouble
getting them back as they were passed from group to group. The
leading characters in the books were female: some showed strong,
determined girls dealing with interesting problems. But slowly doubts
began to creep in. It wasn't so much a question of what the books
were about, as what they were not about. Was it right that we should
be reading so many books with ‘girly’ subjects like romance and
pregnancy? Weren't we just contributing to the idea that girls’ lives
occupy a special enclosed area in which war, aggression, adventure,
sport, play no part? Did the books really give an alternative
viewpoint?
One of the books, Fifteen,8 begins like this:
 Today I'm going to meet a boy, Jane Purdy told herself, as she
walked up Blossom Street toward her babysitting job. Today I'm
going to meet a boy. If she thought it often enough as if she really
believed it, maybe she actually would meet a boy, even though
she was headed for Sandra Norton's house and the worst
babysitting job in Woodmont.

The entire book revolves around getting a boyfriend, clothes,

making-up, baby-sitting, being one of the crowd, and it was one of
the most popular of the books we bought. It's not surprising that this
should be so: if girls are encouraged by the world around them to
think of themselves in terms of marriage and romance, then that's
what they'll want to read about. The problem is that so few of the
books question the traditional picture, and that doesn't apply only to
the books you read in school: elsewhere in this book you will find
discussion of the images of women to be found in girls’ magazines
and romantic fiction.
There are alternatives. More and more writers like Louise
Fitzhugh, Betsy Byars, M.E. Kerr and Rosa Guy are writing really
good books in which the characters do not have clearly defined sex
roles.9 The problem is that the further you go up the age range, the
more difficult it is to find books which break away from traditional sex
roles, and from the fourth year onwards, most teachers have to
choose from a limited list of books prescribed by the examination
boards. Some, as I have said, have very stereotyped views of
women: others are more stimulating. The nineteenth century, when
women really began to write, produced great writers like Jane
Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës: we don't need to agree with
everything they have to say about womanhood to find these books
interesting today. Some male writers, like Thomas Hardy, have
written powerfully about the problems encountered by women.
Whatever you are reading, the important thing is this. Writers do not
present ‘real life’: they present a particular interpretation of real life.
Reading is not just a passive activity. We have to learn to ‘read’ with
a questioning eye: to ask ourselves: ‘What image of men and
women, their behaviour and relationships, does this writer give us?
Is this the way it is? Is this the way we want it to be? Is this the way it
has to be?’

Writing: doing what comes naturally?

As with reading, so with writing: along with the idea that boys have to
be ‘coaxed’ into reading, whereas girls take to it like ducks to water,
goes the idea that girls enjoy writing, boys find it difficult. One
researcher conducted an experiment in which she asked a group of
teachers to mark a selection of children's writing. She found that
work which was thought to be by a boy got a higher grade, and more
complimentary comments, than the same piece of work when it was
thought to have been written by a girl.10 I don't think this necessarily
shows that teachers are prejudiced in favour of boys; rather it shows
that they have lower expectations of boys, and therefore they reward
their achievements more highly.
It may be that girls enjoy writing more than boys, and that the
content of their writing tends to be different. If boys often choose to
write about cops and robbers or war, to write funny stories, science
fiction stories; if girls often write about romance and emotions,
personal stories — after all, these are the interests they have been
encouraged, by their reading and their upbringing, to develop. You
can judge for yourself whether this is true. Is there a difference,
though, in the way in which girls and boys approach their writing, and
the way they express their ideas?
The following extracts are taken from reports on the year's English
work, written by 3rd year students. In this section, they were asked
to choose pieces they had written during the year, to describe the
piece and the way they went about writing it, and to say why this
particular piece was significant. They were asked to take particular
care because this report would be kept as a record of their work.
Can you tell which were written by boys, and which by girls?
1 The Elephant.
This was a descriptive poem, which took half-a-piece of A4
paper, but there was an illustration at the end that increased the
length to three-quarters of a page of A4 paper. This piece of
work is significant, because I felt as if it was my most successful
poem, and that I had described the elephant, and its
environment, exactly how I wanted to.
 First of all I noted any words that described the elephant, or
connected it to the environment. Then I numbered each section
so as to put it in a specific order. Next I wrote my notes out into
sentences, so as to check all my spellings. All this was done in
rough, so my last task was to write it up onto A4 paper. Although
this poem was planned very thoroughly, it did not take me long.
Altogether with both the planning and the writing it took me
approximately two hours.

2 Title: From one to the other. Length 22 pages.

Type: Imaginative long story.
It was significant because from the beginning of writing the story
I knew exactly what I wanted to write and how to write what I
wanted to say. I had never written a very long story before and I
enjoyed writing it. The characters I wrote about almost became
real live people. They were stuck in my mind as I wrote the story.
I wrote the whole story out in rough and then I went through to
check as many spelling mistakes as I could. The idea came to
me after I had read a book called ‘Into Exile’. Altogether it took
me six weeks to write.

3 Title: Haiku.
Type of writing: Haiku.
Length: 3 lines.
Why it was significant: It was significant because it was a new
type of writing.
How I went about writing it: I thought about it and then wrote it in
rough.
How long it took: It took 1 lesson to write.

4 I wrote a book called ‘Fools Chase’. It was only fifteen pages

long with six chapters, each chapter being two to three pages
long. It is a book to be read by children. It took a bit of thinking
about it to keep it going because I could of ended it a couple of
times. If I had an Idea I jotted it down and tryed to add it to the
story. The trouble was I couldn't sit down and write. I couldn't
write very much before I had to have a rest from it. At times I felt
 like completely changing the story, or starting again. I wrote it in
rough before putting it into best. It took me about 6 weeks to
write that with doing other things in between.

5 Increasing your vocabulary. Factual. 1 hour. Its significant

because it learn't me something. I look the words up in a
dictionary and wrote it down. 1 piece of paper.

If you found this difficult, it isn't surprising, because I cheated. All

the writers were, in fact, girls, and all were from the same group. The
important point is this: the ways in which these girls approached and
thought about their writing, the language they used, even the form in
which they chose to organise and express their thoughts, show
immense variety. There may be differences between the sexes, but
the differences within the sexes are just as great.
All the same, when I chose these pieces, I based my choice on
certain ideas about ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ writing. They go
something like this:
Boys are more casual and detached, prefer short, practical writing,
express themselves more concisely and factually.
Girls are more involved in their work, fluent, thorough, prefer longer,
imaginative pieces, express themselves more tentatively and
emotionally.
As you can see, the above pieces cross all of these categories, yet
all of them were written by girls.
The group was in an all-girls school. If there had been any boys in
the group, would they have responded differently? You might find it
interesting to gather some examples of writing, read them out to a
group, and see whether you can tell which are written by boys and
which by girls. Or you could read extracts from novels, without giving
the name of the author. Could you tell which was written by a man,
and which by a woman? What criteria were you using to help you
decide?
What exactly do we mean if we talk about ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’
writing? Is it a question of subject matter and point of view, or is it
something about the words themselves, and the way they are put
together? There are all sorts of problems here, which women writers
have tried to deal with. When we talk about a ‘feminine’ style, do we
mean that it expresses the feelings, the way of seeing the world,
which comes ‘naturally’ to a woman, or is it the language which
women have learnt, from the society in which they live, to be the
language of femininity? If a woman wants to avoid the traps of
writing in a ‘romantic’, ‘passive’ style, should she then ‘write like a
man’? But how then can she really express what it's like to be a
woman? There are plenty of women novelists and poets writing
today, and it's worth looking to see how they have dealt with these
problems. It's difficult, because the woman who can write about a
woman's experience, free from conditioning and learnt assumptions,
has not yet been born. It's not just a question of describing the world
as we see it and experience it our language has been formed by a
society which has particular ideas about the roles of men and
women, and the language itself reflects it. Look at these sentences:
‘God created the world in six days; on the seventh day; she rested.’
‘If a child shows promise, the teacher should encourage her or his
potential.’
‘When Primitive Man discovered fire, she took the first step towards
civilization.’
What are the assumptions which make these sentences sound
awkward or odd?
The novelist Virginia Woolf said, about the problems which face a
woman writer: ‘To begin with, there is the technical difficulty — so
simple, apparently; in reality, so baffling — that the very form of the
sentence does not fit her. It is a sentence made by men; it is too
loose, too heavy, too pompous for a woman's use.’11
Styles may have changed since 1929, when this was written: but
is the problem still there? When you feel that ‘you know what you
want to write, but you don't know how to say it’, is it because the
language for what you want to write is not available to you? Try, for
example, to write a story in which it is not clear whether the narrator
is a man or a woman. Is it possible to write in a ‘neutral’ style?
Writing is anything but a passive activity. It is hard work. It is a
challenge, but it is a challenge worth meeting. Once we understand
that language is not a simple tool, that there are different ways of
using language, we can start to use language, instead of letting
language use us. We can play with language, fight with it,
experiment with it. Mandy McLoughlin's piece, ‘The Golden Pathway’
which follows this chapter is just one example. She wrote it at
school, for her fifth-year examination folder. It is an angry piece, but
it is also an exciting one, because it reminds us that through our
writing, in and out of the English classroom, we can explore and
challenge our experiences as girls and women, can try out new ways
of looking at the things we take for granted.

A quiet life

Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.
(William Shakespeare, King Lear)

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs.

It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
(Dr Johnson)

Talk is a crucial part of the English lesson. Through talking we

explore and test our ideas, try out ways of using language and
communicating. This is not only valuable as part of the learning
process, but also vital because in our lives we talk more than we
write. It's not surprising that teachers are concerned when they feel
that girls are less willing than boys to talk in the classroom. Look at
these statements:
1 Boys dominate discussion; the girls won't talk.
2 Women are chatterboxes; they talk too much.
If women love to talk, why don't girls talk more in the classroom?
Let's look at some of the reasons why this should be so. From an
early age, we learn not only the vocabulary and grammar of our
language, but also the appropriate ways of using it: what is ‘polite’,
what is ‘acceptable’. What boys learn about spoken language,
however, is rather different from what girls learn. If a little girl plays
quietly, doesn't talk a lot, that's ‘natural’; if a little boy behaves in the
same way, he needs to be stimulated. Fathers often talk more
boisterously to their sons than to their daughters.
From listening to adults, reading, watching films and television, we
learn the ‘rules’ of conversation. Have you learnt to accept that:
Men: talk loudly, boast, swear, show their anger, go straight to the
point, state their point of view forcefully, tell jokes, interrupt, use
slang.
Women: talk quietly, listen, are polite, considerate to the listener, use
good grammar, express themselves cautiously and emotionally.
I'm not saying that people necessarily follow these rules. But do they
feel they ought to follow them? Compare ‘What a load of bloody
rubbish’ to ‘Oh dear, that isn't very nice’. Either of these statements
could be made by either a man or a woman, but I don't think you'll
have much difficulty guessing which is supposed to be masculine,
which is ‘feminine’. This applies to what we talk about as well as how
we say it. For example, if boys avoid emotional subjects or make
jokes about them, isn't this because from the first ‘Now be a big boy,
boys don't cry’ society has taught them to repress these feelings? If
girls don't tell jokes in public (even if they laugh and joke in private),
is this because most humour depends on laughing at those very
subjects which society has taught them to hold sacred?
As they reach adolescence, girls also learn how to be popular with
boys. Here's Val in London Morning,12 trying to conceal her working-
class background and to behave in the ladylike, feminine manner
which she believes her boyfriend expects:

I kept taking a furtive glance at my reflection in shop windows as I

walked down the Old Kent Road and approved of the smart young
lady under the big, black umbrella. I was thinking about the article I
had read last night in a woman's magazine. ‘You should walk as
though you had an imaginary pile of books on your head. . . . Men
like women to speak in soft, deep tones.’ I was quietly saying to
myself: ‘How do you do, Clive? I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,’
when I was suddenly interrupted by ‘Ah, there you are.’ And he
was there.
 The rules for a girl who wants to be popular are clear enough. She
should listen, talk softly, talk about what the boy wants to talk about,
ask questions, look interested, flatter him. She should not use rough
language, interrupt, disagree, talk too much. Thus girls learn to
conceal their interests and personalities.
Women have the reputation of being great talkers, but try listening
to conversations in the pub, on television chat shows and interviews,
in lessons, at meetings. Who does the most talking? What sex are
most politicians, trade union leaders, television announcers? Women
may talk a lot in private, but most public speaking is done by men.
This has two important effects. One is that women who speak up in
public have to take over a language generally thought to be more
appropriate to men. They run the risk of being called bossy, nagging,
illogical, hysterical. It may be partly suspicion of women who take
over a ‘masculine’ role, but it may also be that it is actually difficult
for women to adapt the ‘rules’ they have learnt to the ‘rules’ of public
speaking; they have to learn a different ‘language’. They have to
overcome embarrassment, fear of ridicule, of making a mistake.
The other point is that ‘men's’ subjects come to be seen as more
serious than ‘women's’ subjects. Politics and football are ‘public’
subjects; home, family, relationships are ‘private’, ‘personal’ subjects.
Given all this, it's not surprising if boys find it easier to talk freely
and spontaneously in the classroom. It may be that girls, having
learnt to be more tentative, show more consideration for the listener;
but these are not ‘public’ virtues. In public discussion, you have to
dominate if you are to be heard.

Seen and not heard: some students’ views

Before I began to write this piece, I thought that I should ask the
students what they thought about English. With the help of two
teachers (one in an all girls’ school, one in a mixed school),13 I asked
two fourth year groups what they liked, disliked and ‘didn't mind’
about their English lessons. The results made me question some of
my preconceptions. If I had written down before I started what I
expected the survey to show, it would have looked something like
this:
Girls enjoy creative writing, reading stories and poems more than
boys do. Boys prefer factual reading and writing, and structured
activities such as grammar work.

Girls prefer ‘passive’ activities such as reading and writing. Boys

generally prefer ‘active’ ones such as drama and making tapes.
Girls are more inhibited and prefer discussion in small groups; boys
are more outgoing and enjoy whole class discussion.
Here, then, is a summary of the results:
1 The fourth year girls showed more enthusiasm for creative writing
than the boys. The boys showed rather more enthusiasm for making
tapes.
2 No one (including the boys) said that they did not enjoy creative
writing.
Neither boys nor girls showed much enthusiasm for reading poetry.
The boys were no more enthusiastic about grammar work than the
girls.
The boys did not show much interest in factual writing. The boys
showed no less interest in reading stories than the girls.
3 There was an interesting difference between the girls in the
single-sex group and the girls in the mixed group. The ‘single-sex’
girls showed more enthusiasm for practically everything, though this
could be because they were an enthusiastic group, or had a
particularly good relationship with their teacher. The most striking
difference, though, was in their attitudes to whole-class discussion
and drama: the ‘single-sex’ girls were much more enthusiastic. In the
mixed group, neither boys nor girls showed much enthusiasm for
these activities, but the girls disliked them more than the boys.
I have talked about the dangers of classifying people as ‘boys’ or
‘girls’. Each answer was different, but the picture as a whole made
me think about two things. First, could it be that girls feel less
vulnerable, more willing to take part in ‘out-going’ activities, when
they are on their own? That, away from boys, they feel less obliged
to act ‘as girls’, more able to act as individuals? Have you found,
yourself, that girls and boys, men and women, talk and behave
differently according to whether they are in mixed groups or in
groups of their own sex?
Second, we have to be very wary of assuming that boys and girls
‘prefer’ particular activities. If boys are bored or dislike a topic, they
can express their disapproval by making a noise. If boys shout, jeer,
make jokes, well, that's how boys behave. What do girls do if they're
bored? Writing letters, reading magazines, talking quietly in little
groups, painting fingernails, may be just as much a rejection of the
lesson as shouting, fighting, playing up. The fact that girls are ‘quiet’
does not mean that they are acquiescing in the lesson any more
than the boys are. The difference is that the girls’ behaviour does not
disrupt the lesson, so it may simply not be noticed; also, it is a
rejection which reinforces, father than challenges, expectations of
feminine behaviour. Girls are quiet anyway, so who notices if they
don't take part? This is particularly important in discussion. If girls
don't talk, they may be making the only protest available to them; but
silence is ‘invisible’.
It is not easy for teachers to overcome the problems of discussion.
After all, people should have the right not to speak, not to be forced
into taking part. If teachers try too hard to ‘get the girls to talk’, they
may emphasise, or even create, barriers between boys and girls;
those girls who do talk freely may become self-conscious. One
answer may be small-group, rather than whole-class, discussion.
This doesn't tackle the real problem, though. Somehow we have to
overcome the idea that certain subjects, certain ways of speaking,
are ‘taboo’ for women; to have confidence in the way we talk, to
make ourselves heard as well as seen. How can we do this?

English: work or play?

In the fourth year, students do not choose to do English: they just do

it. So I also asked two groups of sixth formers to write about why
they had chosen to do English ‘A’ level, and what they enjoyed about
it.
Once more, I was surprised. Although these students had chosen
to do English, the difference between boys and girls was much more
marked. The girls showed much more enthusiasm for reading
novels, and, to a lesser extent, poetry, than the boys did. The boys
showed a definite preference for creative writing. Is this to do with
the idea that writing is doing, is active; reading is receiving, is
passive? Again, the girls in the single-sex school showed much more
enthusiasm for discussion than the ‘mixed’ girls, three of whom
specifically mentioned that discussion was a problem.
When asked to give reasons for their choice, many of the boys
emphasised that English was a useful subject, that it went with their
other options, that they had been encouraged by their exam results.
Very few girls mentioned these reasons, but almost all the girls
mentioned enjoyment of English as an important factor, and half of
the ‘single-sex’ girls also said that they wanted to increase their
enjoyment of literature.
These comments illustrate the differences:

I feel that English is a useful subject to learn at ‘A’ level as it is not

only accepted as a good ‘A’ level to obtain, but it improves one's
 abilities in English, which are helpful and satisfying in later life.
(Boy)

I had no choice. It was the only subject open to me with the other
two ‘A’ level subjects that I wanted to do. (Boy)

I have always enjoyed reading and towards the end of the fifth
year I had begun to realise that there was a great deal to learn
from novels apart from the basic story. However, I didn't feel I
could find a way into novels without the help of a structured course
like ‘A’ level and I think it has succeeded in making me appreciate
literature more fully, which was what I wanted originally. (Girl)

Since most ‘A’ level courses are primarily, even exclusively,

literature courses, it seems at first as though the girls, with their
romantic emphasis on the pleasure of literature, are an English
teacher's dream. Many of the boys, on the other hand, with their
concise, down-to-earth comments, seem to have chosen English for
all the ‘wrong’ reasons. And yet — don't they have a much better
understanding of the education system, a more realistic appraisal of
long-term career prospects?
This impression is confirmed when you look at what happens to
students who go on to University to study English. More girls pass ‘A’
level, more girls do English at university; but more boys get top
degrees, and go on to further study.14 When you look at English
teachers in university departments, there are far more men than
women. Of course, there are lots of things you can do with English
‘A’ level, apart from going on to university; but does this suggest that
when English is pleasure, the girls do well; when it becomes
connected with work, the boys shoot ahead?
There's another point, too. Two-thirds of those who do English at
‘A’ level are girls — but how far does the ‘A’ level course take
account of this? Would you expect to find these comments in a book
or examination paper:
‘The poet should use language appropriate to her meaning.’
‘What is the responsibility of the writer towards her society?’
‘The dramatist expresses her point of view through her characters.’
Unless you are writing about a particular woman writer, you are
expected to refer to ‘the writer’ as ‘he’. Also, at ‘A’ level you are
almost always limited to the ‘set books’ prescribed by the examining
board (unlike CEE, for example, where the choice is much more
flexible and can be adapted to the students’ interests). In 1977, the
popular JMB board set one work by a woman (Jane Austen) among
their twenty-five texts. This is fairly standard. From the ‘A’ level lists,
you could be forgiven for getting the impression that there were no
women poets, and only one twentieth-century woman writer (Virginia
Woolf). Writers like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Katharine Mansfield,
Olive Schreiner, Sylvia Plath, Doris Lessing, are ‘invisible’. Thus girls
at ‘A’ level are even more likely to learn about what it means to be a
woman through the eyes of men; they are certain to acquire the idea
that ‘serious’ writing is done by men. Is it surprising that the boys
showed more interest in creative writing than the girls?

Why choose English?

What am I saying, then? Does this mean that girls should all give up
English and do science instead? I hope you will have realised that
that isn't what I'm saying at all. It is important that in the future more
girls should take scientific and technical subjects. There are changes
to be made; we all need to remind ourselves that girls are not all the
same, and neither are boys. Having said that, there are good
reasons for choosing English.
Whatever the reasons why girls do well at English, we can make
use of that fact. English gives us a unique chance to look at the
images of men and women in our society, and to question those
images. It gives us the opportunity to look at language, at the way
we learn to express ourselves, and to test the limits of that language,
in speaking and writing. English gives us a chance to see how men
and women have shown the problems of girls and women at
particular stages of our society, or have had particular assumptions
about the way men and women should behave. Once you are aware
of the problems, you can read with a discerning eye, measuring the
writer's viewpoint against your own. We can compare this with the
way in which, in our present-day world, women learn what a ‘woman’
is. Feminism, like English, is about learning to ‘read’; to read the
hidden messages, all around us, every day, telling us what women
‘are’, what women ‘ought to be’. It is a good partnership.

Notes
1 RSLA – Four Years On, Department of Education and Science Report on Education No.
95, October 1979.
2 Ann-Marie Wolpe, Some Processes in Sexist Education, Women's Research and
Resources Centre Publication, 1977, p. 40.
3 See Statistics of Education, vol. 2, HMSO, 1977.
4 Dale Spender, ‘The Facts of Life: sex differentiated knowledge in the English classroom
and the school’, in English in Education, vol. 12, no. 3, Autumn 1978, pp. 3–4.
5 Debra Peart, ‘Schoolgirls Up Against Sexism’, Spare Rib, Issue 75, October 1978, p.6.
6 Stan Barstow, ‘The Desperadoes’, The Human Element and other stories, Longman
Imprint, 1969.
7 Bill Naughton, Late Night on Watling Street, Longman Imprint, 1969.
8 Beverley Cleary, Fifteen, Penguin/Peacock, 1962.
9 Interested students and teachers will find the following publications very helpful:
Spare Rib List of Non-Sexist Children's Books (available from Spare Rib, 27 Clerkenwell
Close, London EC1R OAT).
Children's Book Bulletin (4 Aldebert Terrace, London SW8 1BH, three issues a year).
10 Dale Spender, op. cit., pp. 4-5.
11 Virginia Woolf, ‘Women and Fiction’, in Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing, ed. Michele
Barrett, The Women's Press, 1979, p. 48.
12 Valerie Avery, London Morning, Pergamon Press, 1969, p. 127.
13 Thank you to Leonie Barua, Donald Fry, Julia Sokota, and their students.
14 See Statistics of Education, vols 2 and 6, HMSO, 1977.
3 The golden pathway
Amanda McLoughlin

This is a shortened version of a story written in 1979 by sixteen-year-

old Amanda McLoughlin for her English language examination folder.
At present, she is unemployed, but is hoping to train as a nurse. It is
an angry and bitter piece, angry not just with the men she ‘meets’ but
with everyone – other girls, parents, people in authority.
We think that this comes in part from her feeling of being forced
into a mould, being expected to fit everyone's expectations. Because
she feels powerless to change those expectations and is made to
feel inadequate because she doesn't fit, her whole experience
seems distorted — becomes a nightmare where she feels totally
wrong, peculiar, out of place.
Trisha McCabe and Angela McRobbie

Everyone has their own individual golden pathway, one which leads
to eternal life, eternal wealth, or some fantastic dream-world that
everyday life cannot offer. Some people are aware of the futility of
their ambitions but continue to drift nonchalantly through life, waiting
for small events to brighten up their lives. Ambitions can be
individual, each one unique, no one can steal them or intrude upon
them. They are capable of instigating you and giving you something
to live for even when the present hangs about you like a stagnant
trap.
I felt there was some great element missing from my life, the ebb
and flow had grown tired. I felt I needed some original spice to liven
up my dull but satisfactory routine. I wanted to make new contacts,
to launch away from both my school and home life. However, there
was someone blocking my way, stopping me from escaping along
this valuable outlet; this someone was my father. He quenched my
dreams like a bucket of water would a recently lighted match.
‘You wouldn't like it if you went to this place you say all girls of your
age go to, if I allowed you to go every week you'd still complain of
boredom. You seem to want complete contrasts and excitement all
the time. Why do you always have to search for entertainment?’
You see, I longed to go to Tiffany's, it was a place I associated with
laughter, dancing and meeting independent people with vibrant lives
who could make me a part of their life. I wanted to desert my own
world in disgust. Now I look back I had always acted on the spur of
the moment, like a spoilt child really. I wildly thrived on any form of
action or rebellion, despite the fact that I hadn't the willpower or
mental strength to fight over a long period for what I wanted.
 Julie, my new associate, encouraged my state of mind. ‘It's only
natural for you to get out sometimes, otherwise you'll finish up
insane with emotion or too disillusioned to put up a fight,’ she said.
When I look back both my father and Julie were right in their own
way, yet Julie's point of view seemed more inviting at the time.
One night Julie had it all worked out. She persuaded me to tell my
mother that we were going to a school meeting, a deliberate lie, but
Julie had animal cunning; when she lied what she said never
seemed to be doubted, perhaps this was because she was a
Catholic. Julie had threatened her brother. She said that unless he
gave us the money we needed for our night out she'd tell her ill
mother about the things he stole. In Julie's house survival depended
upon corrupt, underhand means. The head of the house was
unmistakably the mother, her stern voice had an edge to it like a
laser beam. You could do nothing to please her, no wonder her
children were so dishonest.

Walking down the road, my state of carefree excitement had

passed over. I felt guilty, almost frightened. On the bus, Julie and all
the other teenage girls going to Tiffany's looked older and more
menacing, they seemed to portray a false impression, not like their
true selves, the ones I knew at school. In the house I was convinced
that I'd literally thrown make-up on to my face, but comparing myself
with Julie and the others I had only applied a child's portion. Julie
seemed quite shocked although she tried not to show it. She said
hesitantly, ‘I hope you'll be able to get in. There's a new manager at
the door, if he thinks you don't look eighteen you won't get in.’ I was
ashamed to look at Julie's low-cut dress, I'd never seen her in
anything like it before. She assimilated easily with girls three or four
years older than herself. Men shouted to her ‘Come on Julie get ya
knickers off.’ I couldn't quite make out whether they meant it or were
joking. Julie seemed quite used to this behaviour, but I was
wondering meanwhile whether I'd put my hair-spray into my
handbag. I was told it could blind an attacker and I wouldn't hesitate
about using it in emergencies.
In my opinion Julie was asking for trouble but I knew or I thought I
knew that Julie wasn't as sexually experienced as she acted.
Anyway, the two of us arrived at the door, a large door where I knew
I would be judged. I was conscious of my entire body. Stiffly I
practised false reactions. I pulled my mouth this way and that, I fixed
my eyes on the floor, a lampshade. I wanted to keep myself
occupied. I thought if I looked absorbed in myself no one would
notice me, I would be one of the crowd, confident enough of my
actions but not so that I would draw attention to myself.
There was a hold-up due to one of the girls in the front. I wondered
if the bouncer with that adult eye of authority in his blood-coloured
uniform would stop me. Once more Julie and I shuffled down the
queue, Julie attempting to match her personality with the boyish
looking girl in front of me, giving sidelong opposing glances as she
hauled her chewing gum to either side of her mouth.
At last it was my turn to pass through the door. Would I pass the
test? The question throbbed violently in my head. ‘Hey you, when's
your date of birth?’ a scowling door bouncer shouted. I'd half
expected it but when I heard his voice I felt such a misfit. Why I
replied ‘The tenth of October, nineteen sixty’ which was of course a
lie, I don't know. ‘No, sorry duck, I can't let you in,’ patronised the
bouncer. He pushed me out of the door like a stray dog. The more
he apologised the more inadequate and rejected I felt. I was
overcome by an unpleasant mixture of hatred and humiliation. The
overgrown bouncer revelling in his authority nauseated me. He
seemed like a bullying dinosaur harbouring a small brain. He made
me want to shock him, make him notice me, then run out leaving the
impression behind me that he couldn't pay me to come inside. Yet it
was too late. I had lowered myself and I didn't want to be laughed at
more than I could help.
I pretended not to hear Julie pleading with the stubborn bouncer to
let me enter the building. I wanted to detach myself, become a
martyr. I walked down the steps towards the exit door. Julie pounced
on me from behind, shouting enthusiastically, ‘Don't go, he said if we
waited for ten minutes he'd probably be able to squeeze you in past
the manager.’ Julie had won the battle, but not for my benefit. She
wanted someone with her for a stooge. I knew that when I left the
house but I didn't care then.
After we'd spent ten minutes half-frozen, perched on a stair, we
descended the rest of the flight. All was easy after that, in practice,
anyhow, as I still detested the thought of having to lurk in the
shadows, ashamed of my very existence. Half of me still wished I'd
never come. The smoky atmosphere hit me. The disco was like an
enclosing cave with dazzling lights. My senses were disturbed but I
was taken over by the glow of excitement.
In the toilets girls corrected minute faults in their make-up. They
looked at themselves from an uncomfortable angle, their faces about
an inch away from the mirror. They didn't notice, however, how
overdone, self-conscious and basically unnatural they looked from a
distance. I looked considerably toned down and rather insignificant
at the side of most of the girls, but I knew I wouldn't feel in place with
the clothing they wore.
The group snatched away my last second of silence. Any ability I
had once acquired to think straight had gone; the music from the top
thirty lost its magic and bouncy tune when you heard it being played
again and again. The disco music became meaningless, one tune
merged into another. When I first saw the spacious inviting dance
floor I simply was taken over by an instinctive urge to dance, but
soon I'd worn out every step physically possible. Other girls seemed
mesmerised and content, just swaying senselessly from side to side
with vacant, empty expressions on their faces, but I knew energy
was precious and I looked and felt stupid forcing myself to waste it in
this way.
Sinister predators lurked in dark corners discussing quietly which
girl who'd conveniently displayed herself on the dance floor would be
prepared to give up the most and expect the least in return. Men
were getting drunk building up courage to ask someone to dance,
which was pointless because they only hovered about anyway while
you did all the dancing; you couldn't talk to them, it wasn't your place
to talk, you were supposed to humbly respond to their cowardly sign
language. You were either willing to have sexual intercourse with
them or not, that's all they wanted to know.
Meanwhile Julie had found a youth to dance with. He thought he
was some smart dancer straight out of ‘Saturday Night Fever’. He
kept bending his tall slim figure at the knees and falling into a
crouching position again and again. His dance routine was very
effective and acrobatic, but surely he couldn't enjoy repeating the
same steps over again, especially when the disco songs dragged on
and on, repeating the same melody and then finally coming to a
fading close.
During the night the oppressive, hot atmosphere mauled me more
and more. A horrible sensation of helplessness gripped me. I wanted
to run out into the cold, clear night and catch a bus. I knew I couldn't.
Julie had the money and the buses had stopped running an hour
ago. People poured on to the dance floor, smooching and feeling
each other's flesh. I was confused — Julie was out of sight,
everywhere I wandered men sneered at me from every direction.
People appeared massive in proportion to myself. Yet I could rely on
no one, not even the police, as I knew I was under-age. My head
throbbed. I was as agitated as a bull in a bull-fight, though my fear
forced me to humour micking, intoxicated men who remarked rudely
about my figure. These people were like Dobermann Pinschers,
anything could trigger them off.
A girl grabbed my arm violently. She had a thickset stature and
exerted her face into masculine expressions. ‘Where do you live?’
she pried in an angry, unfeeling tone. My privacy was painfully being
uprooted. People beyond a certain age were forbidden to enter their
community, you had no status until you looked eighteen. There were
social rules which I was unaware of.
I found myself studying faces. The more I thought about them the
uglier they looked. I saw twisted noses, immense hooked noses
which drained away strength from the rest of the face, eyes unable
to focus, doped and expressionless, lacking the gleam of life. I was
beginning to feel glad that I was an alien, that I didn't belong. These
people weren't at harmony with the universe and I knew I should
express sympathy for them. They came to Tiffany's every week, the
very sameness of their routine never provided them with a breathing
space to decide why they went.
I tried to talk with a man about which pop groups he preferred. I
asked him what Zodiac sign he was and attempted to explain how
Leos have different characteristics to Pisces. The man looked at me
with disbelief and labelled me as an eccentric. I was unable to
instigate any sort of conversation. He looked averagely intelligent,
but he only said everyday things like ‘Do you come here often? What
do you think of the group?’ The number one question as far as he
was concerned was: How old are you?
Most men I've talked to have certain things they ask, like a tape-
recorder with only one tape. After they've asked these questions
they try to assess how they could use you for their own advantage.
There are two types of men who roam in and out of discos in their
leisure time. One type is aged about twenty-five and shows a
reactionary concern with the fashion world, as he has a dread of
looking physically out of place. Consequently, he dresses moderately
up-to-date and shows a rather pathetic femininity. He usually has
permed hair which conveniently hides his face, which he has a
noticeable complex about. He wears a casual jacket with a hood
which makes him look hunchbacked and weak.
The second type has a definitely foreign and flashy, self-confident
air about him. He is considerably better looking than the first type
and stands out in a crowd unlike the first type, who assimilates and
blends in like a part of the scenery. He usually has straight, well-
combed black hair. He is slim and faultless in appearance and
believes truly that he is the stereotype disco-dancing star. The
second type stares a great deal. He is persistent if he takes a fancy
to you and he's hard to offend. Behind his flashing dark eyes,
however, there lies a malign, baneful instinct, evil and seducing.
Julie had only been gone for five minutes but it seemed like five
nightmarish hours. When she tapped me on the shoulder the sigh of
relief came to me like water comes to a man in the desert, like a
delightful shock. We walked out of the door towards Boots’ chemist,
the place where the taxi would wait, and all my tired body wanted to
do was to be cut loose of daily strain and movement and retire into
my own cocoon. As I did this I knew that Tiffany's was not part of my
golden pathway, and I was privileged to realise this, I thought, as I
glided into unconsciousness.
4 Schools and careers:
for girls who do want to wear
the trousers
Trisha McCabe
Illustrated by Monica Ross

I have been working with girls in one way or another for the last five
years, in schools, colleges, work-places and youth clubs. This
chapter is based on my research into girls and the transition from
school to work – or more accurately now, unemployment. Girls and
young women I've worked with feel it's an accurate account and I'd
like to thank them for their help. Strictly speaking, the girls in this
chapter should be writing it themselves. I'd like to see girls given the
facilities and encouragement to make that happen.

Question: If you could be anything in the world, what would you

choose to be?
Answer: Secretary to a famous person.

This article is about why the girl who answered this question didn't
want to be the famous person. It's also about why she wouldn't have
stood a chance anyway. And about why wanting to be ‘His’ secretary
makes sense for girls.
The question and answer above is from a questionnaire carried
out in a junior school, with seven- and eight-year-old girls and boys.
The boys’ answer to this question included professional footballer,
astronaut, famous explorer. Other answers from the girls were
matron, private secretary and the queen! I also asked these kids
what they expected to be doing in ten years’ time. The boys
answered mechanic, joiner, electrician. The girls answered
housewife, nurse, secretary. Both the girls and boys were (pretty)
realistic about the second question. And both the boys and girls were
(pretty) ridiculous about the first – which was fair enough. It was a
pretty ridiculous question. Whether you want to be on ‘Match of the
Day’ or fly round the world as a private secretary to the jet-setting
and famous, obviously neither of these things are likely to really
happen. The boys had about as much chance of being an astronaut
as the girls had of being the queen. But what struck me then, and
still does, is just how different – whether in fantasy or real life – the
boys’ and girls’ expectations were. Realistically, the boys could make
it to be a mechanic, and the girls might be a secretary (though they
could both more easily end up as a technician or a typist), but even
these are very different types of work – in terms of pay, status and
opportunities. Yet even when all the restrictions were removed, and
they could imagine anything in the whole world as a possibility, why
did the boys who thought they'd be mechanics think of footballers or
astronauts as their ideal jobs, when the girls who might be typists or
nurses only thought as far as secretaries or matrons? And why did
the question ‘What do you think you'll be doing in ten years’ time?’
make all the boys think in terms of jobs (they didn't say ‘I expect to
be a husband or father by then’) while lots of girls answered the
same question in terms of marriage and the family? Housewife or
mother were the most common answers from the girls. What I'd
expected to find out from these two questions was how ideal,
imaginary jobs compared to the work that the kids expected to be
doing, that is, how far ‘real’ expectations limited the ways in which
they thought about other possibilities. The answers I actually got
made it quite clear that you can't just compare boys’ and girls’
expectations about jobs, ‘career aspirations’ they call it in the books,
without recognising that the way in which boys and girls see their
futures is fundamentally different. It's not just a question of which job,
but of what kind of job, or rather work, and in what circumstances.
It's not just a question of what advice the schools give, or what jobs
are available, but of what kind of messages girls receive from
everywhere, and everyone, in our society. It seems to me now that
being a housewife is work – and hard work at that (which I haven't
heard careers’ teachers mention) – but it's not the same kind of work
as, say, being a mechanic. A mechanic is a description of someone's
job, a housewife is a description of a person. The work a housewife
does isn't paid, it's not nine to five, but twenty-four hours a day, and
especially if caring for children is involved it's more demanding, with
more responsibility – and yet less recognition – than any other job I
can think of. So why do women do it? Why do we expect to do it?
And why do schools, careers’ officers, employers, shop stewards
and parents assume that all women will ‘naturally’ be just dying to
spend their days (and nights) changing nappies, washing dishes,
floors and windows, cooking, shopping and cleaning for free rather
than doing a boring well-paid job, for a full eight hours a day, with
nothing else to do after that but relax, go out, and enjoy yourself?

Well, maybe work, maybe life, just isn't like that for women. It can't
be that we're all stupid (can it?), though obviously some people think
so. A well-known ‘expert’ on education, John Newsom, said in 1948
in his book, The Education of Girls:1

No woman in this age of equality of opportunity, of careers open to

all, of equal education and political rights ... is compelled to get
married and accept the degradation involved. Yet she chooses it
deliberately as her main occupation.
The conclusion is, we go into the worst job around deliberately, with
our eyes wide open, for some peculiar reason which intelligent men
like Newsom can't figure out.
So what's the answer? I tried reading books about schools, about
starting work, about ‘careers’. But the ‘schoolkids’ were all boys, the
‘workers’ were all men (or at least that's all the writers of the books
talk about). I couldn't find much about girls – the odd paragraph or
footnote at best. So I started to ask girls about their ideas about
school, work and the future. (Mr Newsom hadn't thought of this one
– the ‘experts’ on schooling rarely bother to ask the people who
actually experience it – the kids – what they think.) What I've found
out so far is what the rest of his article will discuss. How true it is for
most girls is your end of the argument. Most of the girls I've talked to
are white and working-class. I think the experience of school (and of
being a woman) is different for middle-class and working-class girls;
it's different for white girls and black girls; it's different for Afro-
Caribbean girls and Asian girls. One way of using this article is to
discuss how – I haven't got those answers, you have.
Last February I was talking, at a conference for fifth and sixth
formers, about girls and school, work and leisure. I'd been saying
what I thought were fairly ‘extreme’ things about what hard work is
involved in getting a boyfriend – buying clothes and make-up, testing
them out, earning the money to go out to discos, etc. – about the
way in which boys treat girls, about ways of getting out of having to
do anything at school – ‘Sir, it's the wrong time of the month . . .’.
After I'd finished I asked if what I'd said had any relationship to the
girls’ own experience of school and leisure. (It was a women-only
group.) I'd expected some criticism, but was pretty shocked by what
it was. The first woman to speak, a sixth former, insisted that I'd
understated the ‘problem’: ‘It's much worse than that, being a girl.’ It
took off from there, really, and perhaps the most significant thing
about it was that everyone in the group was able to use her own
experience to judge what I'd been saying. There was a lot of criticism
of education – your personal experience isn't usually seen as a valid
way of learning or criticising; certainly not as important as what you
read in books (this book?). It made it clear to me that my own
experience is one thing that determines what, and how, I write. Your
own experience determines, in some ways, how you read and what
you think about it.
So in thinking about careers I thought back on my own
‘aspirations’. When I was about six or seven I wanted to be a ballet
dancer! Unfortunately, as I got older I also got taller – too tall to be a
ballerina (they're always so petite!). My ambitions had changed by
then to journalism, which, amazingly, was regarded as an unsuitable
job for a woman at my (convent) school. The careers teacher, a nun,
would only encourage girls to go into nursing, teaching or to college
or university (or, of course, to be a nun). Actually, at one time I did
want to be a nun – that was in between the ballet dancer and the
journalist. And now I'm doing research and writing articles like this
one. This seems a motley collection of ‘career aspirations’, so what
made me pick on this lot? I can't remember anything in particular
that made ballet dancing suggest itself – most likely it was stories in
comics like Bunty, where all the girls seem to be ballerinas, show
jumpers or orphans. The nun thing is clearer. My two best friends at
junior school wanted to be priests – something wildly encouraged by
the school, the church and by parents. I, too, wanted to be a priest
(this was after I wanted to be an altar boy) but was told, gently but
firmly, that women couldn't be priests. How about a nun? (You can
bake the bread the priests eat.)

The journalism idea came from a careers horoscope in Jackie.

Geminis, apparently, are pretty good at journalism – because we
never shut up and are basically two-faced I think was the general
idea. So there I was, chatting at a ‘careers convention’ to the man
from the Hartlepool Mail, about my chances with D.C. Thompson
and glamour. It didn't take long to realise that what the future in
journalism held for me, as a woman, was more likely to be reporting
flower shows, fashion trends, weddings, food prices and shortages in
the shops – ‘human interest stories’ they call it – rather than earth-
shattering world events. How many times have you seen women war
correspondents, women reporting on major strikes, parliament, the
balance of payments, the oil crisis?
So on to university – something that would open up new horizons!
And English literature. Of course, English is a women's subject, and
there must have been eight or ten men and fifty women on my
course. (Students, that is – all but three or four of the lecturers were
men!) ‘With an English degree you can always go into teaching, or
top secretarial work’ – so what's new? And if I'd done sciences at
school (which hardly any girls did) the picture would have been even
worse; no women lecturers, one or two women students, perhaps,
and the rest either ‘helping you out’ (well it's very kind of you but
actually I do know how to do this (very simple) experiment), or
blaming everything you don't know (because you haven't learnt it
yet) on your sex (bloody stupid women). How does it feel to be the
odd one out/a freak? ‘With a science degree you can always go into
teaching . . . .’
The new horizons seem to stretch as far as finding a better class
of husband – engagement rings are as common as degrees.
Rosemary Deem quotes two fairly typical examples in her book
Women and Schooling:2

My degree doesn't really matter very much; I'll probably get

married after graduation.
 I would like to get an upper second, but it would upset my
boyfriend if I got a better degree than he has.

Lecturers’ general attitude to women students comes through too:3

‘We expect women who come here [to university] to be competent,
good students, but we don't expect them to be brilliant or original.’
Nevertheless, here I am writing this article, talking about girls,
something I know about mainly because I was one, and doing
something I actually like. But the reasons for doing it, the things that
happened to me, the influences that led me to this, the luck, the
chances, (the weather?) seem pretty haphazard to say the least. I
don't think people make up their minds early on and, through hard
work, grit and determination, miraculously ‘make it’. At university
being working-class (like me) was unusual. Being white (like me)
was normal. So what happens to working-class kids, to black kids? I
don't think being asked in careers questionnaires whether you'd
rather mend a wooden stool or feed chickens (you must tick one or
the other – aha! you want to work with your hands/work outdoors)
makes much difference. But the one factor that's been there in every
choice I've made, or that's been made for me, is being female. Well?
Am I just a biased ‘women's libber’ or is there some truth in all this?
And isn't it all different now – after all, this was between five and
fifteen years ago?

‘Well, you're interested in people's rights, and you've studied

some law. I definitely think you should marry a solicitor.’ Girls,
careers and careers teachers

This gem from a careers officer is what I want to talk about in this
part of the article. I'll argue that girls are still seen primarily as future
wives and mothers, and that this often means that careers and
careers education for girls are not taken seriously – by teachers,
parents, careers officers, and to some extent girls themselves.
Basically it seems to me that there is a distance preserved between
girls and work which is quite unlike the way in which boys and work
are thought about – i.e. together. One of the first questions anyone
asks a man is what he does for a living. Recently I was doing a press
interview about our local women's paper and the very first question I
was asked was ‘are you married?’. (The interview wasn't printed!)
Work (earning money) is not on the whole seen as the main priority
for girls; ‘getting on’ isn't as important as getting a man; the family in
the future is still assumed to be girls’, all girls’, main concern. It's
common sense, after all, you just can't get girls interested in careers!

One careers film I watched with a large mixed class was about
heavy goods vehicle driving, distribution and delivery, and the
only women in it were serving in the motorway cafe. The
goodies on offer were: the chance to do further education and
learn about ‘air pressure brakes’; the fact that these jobs
(drivers, mechanics, warehousemen) ‘obviously require physical
strength but not A levels’; that they were relevant ‘since I was a
little boy I've been interested in lorries, engines and that’; and
that ‘drivers have to spend a lot of time away from home’. All
bonuses – but for whom? The girls, not surprisingly, spent the
film talking, giggling, shifting around, going to the loo, looking
out of the window, waving at each other and pulling faces at the
 teacher. Bored. Passing the time. The teacher's response was
shouting at them to shut up, pay attention: ‘some people want to
see this film’, be serious, ‘You'll all be unemployed in six
months’. Girls, he explained to me, just aren't interested, you
can't get them to take careers seriously.

One of the problems with ‘common sense’ is precisely that it isn't

questioned; schools can breathe a sigh of relief. Girls aren't
interested, so teachers don't have to make a big effort to interest
them, to cover issues relevant to them. In one school I visited boys
and girls were seen by the careers service separately. Girls weren't
seen till after the closing date for apprenticeship applications. Girls
aren't interested in apprenticeships, as we all know, so girls aren't
told about them. It's a vicious circle with girls in the middle. Careers
is often seen as a ‘spare’ space on the timetable when researchers
like me can take girls out for a chat. And careers lessons are pretty
boring and irrelevant on the whole so why bother to disillusion the
teachers? If you can have a laugh without them paying much
attention (girls just aren't interested . . .) so much the better. Real
work is men's work – ‘you can't expect boys to sit through a lesson
on secretarial work, they just wouldn't have it’ – and real women are
quiet, gentle, caring wives and mothers, don't get their hands dirty.
‘Girls don't mind hearing about mechanics – their boyfriends
probably have a motorbike or something.’ No one has ever said to
me ‘Boys don't mind hearing about secretaries – their girlfriend
probably has a typewriter or something.’ So why is it just girls who
are assumed to be interested in their boyfriend's work/hobbies/exam
results, and not the other way round? Girls’ and women's lives are
structured around marriage and the family – and their waged work
(as well as the housework they're expected to do) is no exception:
The Perfect Secretary should be like the perfect wife – always on
hand to ensure the comfort of her boss . . . employment bureau
chief Margery Hurst . . . thinks ‘a boss and his secretary should
work at the relationship as you would a marriage’. (Daily Mail,
22/4/80)
Careers teacher: And how will this fit in with your family?
Julie: But I haven't got a family! I haven't thought about it yet, I'm
only fifteen.
Careers teacher: You'd better think about it, for when you do have
a family.
Me: Do you ask boys that question?
 It's questions like these which help to construct girls’ career choice
in terms of their role within the family. A career is chosen (though not
necessarily achieved) not only for interest but also from within the
scope of ‘suitable’ jobs for women, jobs that won't interfere with, or
take priority over, our relationships with men. As one girl put it, ‘I
want to be a teacher because if you're teaching and you want to stop
you can get an allowance and go back to work later when the
children grow up.’ I don't think boys choose jobs because they'll fit in
with their family, or they can take time off to look after children. Of
course, it's not just schools that define for us what we can and can't
do with our lives. Parents, employers, boys, other girls even, all have
certain assumptions about men and women, about what's
appropriate for each, what's ‘a nice job’ for a girl. Of course, we don't
just accept, or interpret in the same way, the messages that come
through television, advertisements, school books, magazines, and
we don't just accept what other people tell us, but we do all receive
them in some way, we're all surrounded by do's and don'ts and
maybe's, and the choices we make are affected by them.

‘You, your Hotpoint liberator, and Persil automatic: together

they make a winning team.’

I want to look in detail at one example of the messages we receive

about women and work – careers books – but obviously these aren't
isolated examples; they're part of education generally (see Anne
Strong's and Gill Frith's articles) and they're written by people who,
of course, share and interpret general attitudes in our society. Also,
as I've said before, the way in which I read these books is affected
by my own experiences – there are different ways of reading – and
you'll have to assess whether my reading fits what you think, the
choices you've made.

Margaret: I think it used to be like that, women could only do some

things, were supposed to just get married and that, but these days
I think you decide.
Me: What do you want to be?
Margaret: I want to be a nurse, I've always wanted to be a nurse. I
think it was ‘Emergency Ward Ten’ that did it, and playing with
teddies, bandaging them and that. A couple of my aunties are
nurses so I know what the job's like – they say it's a good job.

This girl obviously knew exactly what she wanted to do, but did
she really decide for herself? I'm not suggesting that she chose
nursing because she was brainwashed or anything – it really was
what she wanted to do. But I think this is a good example of the way
everything that surrounds us – television, the toys we play with as
kids, the jobs our friends and family do – influences our decisions.
This girl could possibly have gone into any number of medical jobs,
but the first thing, and the only thing, she thought of was nursing.
Doctors and nurses is a common game children play. It's exciting,
satisfies some of their curiosity about each other's bodies, creates in
play the responsibility for other people (albeit only teddies or dolls)
that children don't often get the chance to feel. But its reference
point, the thing that makes it make sense, is adult reality. Margaret
bandaged the teddies while her brother probably played doctor, just
as the ‘Emergency Ward Ten’ nurses were all women, the doctors
were all men. And Margaret probably also played ‘mummies and
daddies’ which, along with making tea and doing housework with
those ‘child’ sized ironing boards, cookers, vacuum cleaners, etc.
often also involves dealing with the cuts and bruises of her ‘children’.
The jobs that women do involve similar responsibilities to her job in
the home – caring, cleaning, cooking and serving meals – and
they're often also done for a man, whether he's your boss or your
husband. When did you last see an advertisement on television that
was aimed at women without reference, whether spoken or
unspoken, to a man? The shampoo or make-up adverts may or may
not have the woman running into his arms at the end, but either way
the man who's going to appreciate the new you is just around the
corner. As a disc jockey put it in one of his phone-ins ‘Tell me about
yourself, Mrs . . ., what does your husband do?’
I hope I've made it clear that we can't just look at careers books, or
careers themselves, in isolation from other things we read and see.
Looking back to how you learnt to read: when Janet was watching
John sailing his toy boat, what was Janet's mother doing? Glenys
Lobban, a teacher, points out:4

The message from most current text books is clear female adults
always wear an apron and are permanently domiciled in the
kitchen while little girls do maths puzzles about scones . . .
Ladybird is supremely sexist and supremely suitable for
Educational Priority Area kids with an all white family who live in a
detached house in the country from whence dad sets off in his suit
and bowler hat and be-aproned mum waves from the patio. The
Pirates initial series is best with one minor pitfall – there is not a
single female character in the twelve books (and the evil
characters are the Black Pirates).

Careers books, the way they're written and the way we read them,
are part of everything we read at school, part of the way we learn.
Not that I think many kids actually bother to read them, though
teachers might. But they're useful to look at because you can get at
the assumptions behind what's written down, the assumptions that
come through in the way they're written as well as the things they
say, about girls and work.

‘Singers, skaters or secretaries – whatever the job, the stories

make marvellous reading!’ Careers today – new images of
women?

Careers books absolutely reinforce the traditional, out of date

ideas about women's capabilities. Bodley Head concede that
women can be air hostesses, beauticians, fashion buyers,
journalists, farmers, library assistants, police women, teachers,
almoners, booksellers, dental assistants and therapists. They may
 also play a part in the process of publishing, television advertising
and broadcasting. Other publishers have similar lists.5

The Sex Discrimination Act has done very little to alter this picture of
careers for girls, and it's not just from careers books that we get
ideas about women's work. I remember an issue of the Bunty Annual
with an A-Z of careers for girls. You know the sort of thing – A is for
air hostess, H is for Hairdresser, S is for Shop assistant, P is for
Pharmacist's assistant, V is for Vet's assistant – lots of assistants
and no vets or pharmacists! It never actually got to Z because the
final picture, bigger than any of the others, was W is for Wife –
complete with wedding dress and proud bridegroom. The ultimate
career for seven- to ten-year-olds. Other careers stuff for kids – like
the rhyming ones quite common in schoolbooks: ‘Glenda is a
grocer's girl who sells you tins of beans; Hattie is a housewife who
whistles while she cleans’, or the teen magazines’ ‘fun’ guides for
adolescents: the career that's right for you, according to your
favourite colour, horoscope, or the colour of your eyes – are no
different. Girls’ fiction, with its dream jobs, is limited to glamour and
romance; the quote at the beginning of this section is from The Girls’
Treasury of Careers Stories: ‘a girl's film career from editing in the
cutting room to acting on the screen’; ‘a news reporter makes a
difficult choice between romance and professional integrity’.
The ‘official’ literature used for careers teaching in schools, though
more realistic, shares similar assumptions about girls’ interests and
attitudes; they're only interested in boys and romance, don't see
work as a ‘career’ but only as a time-filler before marriage, are
frivolous and difficult to get interested – choosing a career according
to your favourite colour, or where your friends are working – which is
actually a sensible consideration, but they don't see it that way. The
following quote, from Tony Crowley's Choosing A Career, is a good
example of the way a discussion of work, through taking a girl as an
example, is changed into a rather derogatory chat about leisure:6

Take a girl whose list of interests showed she spent most of her
time out with boyfriends and going to dances. Suppose she chose
to go to work in the local factory operating a machine. She had
shown no interest in working with her hands – our ‘practical’
heading. But if her job was easy to learn and could be done after
only a short spell of training, there is no reason why she shouldn't
do it well. And if all she asks is to work with her friends and not
have a job with a lot of responsibility then she could be quite
happy, couldn't she? Of course, if it were a job which did take
some time to learn and needed a lot of skill with your hands then it
might be different. For instance, you would expect a boy who
wanted an apprenticeship in joinery not only to have been quite
good at woodwork at school, but to have listed some things under
the practical heading wouldn't you?

The message of this is quite clear. Girls aren't ‘practical’, aren't

looking for ‘a career’, but will be ‘quite happy’ with a routine factory
job, are more interested in their love life than their working life and
don't want responsibility. Note how the tone becomes more serious
once the boy and ‘skill’ are mentioned. There's no recognition of the
fact that a factory job might be all that's going, it's better paid than
office or shop work, it's boring so working with friends makes it more
bearable, and who wants to spend their life doing a boring job
anyway? Most girls, and most boys for that matter, aren't going to
have a ‘career’ at all, they're probably going into a job where
clocking off is the highlight of the day, so it makes sense to put your
energy into what you do with your own time. At the moment getting
any job is an achievement, and a lot to do with luck. Unemployment,
particularly for school leavers, is a common problem. But for girls, it's
not seen as much of a problem. Michael Carter suggests that
parents think in terms of a ‘ “good” job for the boys and a “nice” job
for the girls. . . . Work, for her, is but a prelude to marriage’,7 and one
careers officer explained to me that girls show little interest in
training and none at all in ‘the chances of promotion because they
don't see it as a long term thing.’ The ‘normal’ working life is
generally seen as continuous, from sixteen to sixty-five, and the
interrupted working life that most women experience, and most girls
expect, is consequently seen as the exception, a variation on the
norm, even though 40 per cent of the labour force is women. Have
you noticed the number of letters to papers, or conversations
between men, and sometimes women, suggesting that married
women should stop working to give school leavers a chance? The
school leavers they mean are boys – boys and men are seen as
having the right to work, while for women this is assumed to be a
choice, secondary to the husband's work, for ‘pin money’ and
luxuries. Expendable.

On 24 April 1976 the Press Association reported 1½ million

unemployed and continued, without comment, that the
government felt ‘an encouraging factor is that in the last three
months most of the increase in unemployment was among
women.’

Work, as something men do, that women might do for a limited

period of time, is an idea reinforced, often unintentionally, in careers
books. The distance between girls and the world of work is not total;
it's not that girls don't and aren't expected to work, it's the way that
they do it – ‘It's different for girls’ – that is different from boys and
men. (No one says ‘Boys have a different attitude to work, they're a
special case.’) Girls are limited in the choices open to them, but they
are also expected to inhabit the role ‘worker’ in certain ways. If you
look at the illustrations in careers books, girls are usually nurses,
typists, secretaries, models. But they're also white, blonde, blue-
eyed, scatty, sitting around, looking like the girls in a Jackie story –
the drawings, not the photo story heroines, who at least look a bit
normal. The token black face is sometimes included, but there's no
attempt to challenge what are ridiculously stereotyped images of
girls. Girls are passive (being photographed or listening to records),
adorable (surrounded by men in the office), caring (playing with
children in the ward – nurses have so much time!), attentive
(listening to the boss). Girls aren't unconventional, noisy, witty,
aggressive, active, interesting. Illustrations are as important as the
written text, they present us with clear, easily identifiable images of
what we are. Interestingly, in some of these booklets, e.g. Starting
Work,8 the post-1975 (post-Sex Discrimination Act) editions have
simply had the illustrations removed. This is almost as bad as the
sticky labels some careers offices have to put inside their
publications saying ‘Please note that throughout this book “he” also
refers to “she”.’ Hardly a radical and determined effort to promote
equality of opportunity!

So what do the texts say? One of the most subtle ways of

excluding girls from many jobs is through apparently open, non-
discriminatory questions. ‘An electrician needs good colour vision.
Do you know why?’ The answer is apparently so obvious that it isn't
given. Asking questions that kids have to answer for themselves is a
useful way of teaching – but not if half the class doesn't have the
answers. Girls often don't know why – when was the last time you
fitted a plug? Who changes fuses in your family? It's likely that the
boys in the class can all give the answers, making the girls feel, at
worst stupid, and at best that the job of an electrician is not for them.
It's not difficult to learn that the wires are two or three different
colours, and have to go into the right places inside the plug. It's just
not likely that girls will have learnt this at school or at home. Have
you ever done any carpentry? I've noticed how often simple things
like which way to turn a screw is something women have to learn,
whereas men pick it up as boys. Playing with dolls doesn't give you
the same skills as playing with Meccano. (How many men or boys do
you know who haven't a clue how to hold a baby?)
Most of the examples used to illustrate a point are ‘men's’ jobs: for
example, in Choosing a Career, the example of a job you can enter
at a higher level after further education is engineering. But girls do
get a look-in in careers books. Job-Hunting with Josephine9 is a
good example – of how not to get a job. Josephine provides a
cautionary tale to us all – she does everything wrong. Just a
coincidence that for a change we have a girl in the leading role?
Now that we've got equality: the Sex Discrimination Act and
careers for girls

This job is open to men and women; applicant must be over six feet
tall, twelve stone, very strong and prepared to strip to the waist . . .

Most of us are aware that the equal opportunities legislation we now

have is worth very little to women. There's the case of the woman
lavatory attendant who claimed equal pay with the male one, and
was told that ‘a male attendant has to approach the job from the
labouring point of view and a female attendant approaches it from a
housekeeping point of view’, or the woman office cleaner who was
refused equal pay with the male warehouse cleaner because ‘The
office cleaners work in the comfortable surroundings of carpeted
offices, very similar to the environment of one's own home.’10 Then
there was the case of the woman who was refused a job as a coach
driver for an ‘adventure travel’ firm on the grounds that ‘a woman at
the wheel did not fit the image of adventure travel’ and that the
women passengers would respond better to a male driver's
leadership. In schools, the situation is worse. You can't appeal to a
tribunal against sex discrimination, but have to go to a county court,
and the Equal Opportunities Commission can only refer cases to the
Secretary of State. Moreover, discrimination is only illegal if other
schools in the area provide the opportunities being complained
about. In Tameside twice as many boys as girls get grammar school
places, but this was ruled lawful because of the single-sex school
system, under which there are more boys’ schools than girls’
schools. Discrimination is often indirect, and the letter of the law
rarely covers this, because ultimately it's ideas about women, and
conditions under which women live, throughout our society that are
responsible. If promotion, say in the civil service, depends on age,
and you have to be under twenty-eight to apply for a certain job, then
this does discriminate against women, because many will have taken
time off work to have children, and will therefore be older than men
with the same experience of the job. But it's not just the civil service
being anti-women. It's also the fact that women are still the people
who take time to look after children, they're still basically responsible
for kids, even if the husband ‘helps’.

Textbooks are not specifically mentioned in the Act, and an

obvious point is that pre-1975 books are still used in most schools,
while the money to replace them is disappearing fast. Sticky labels
don't solve the problem – the news that he also refers to she is
hardly new; how many times have we been told that ‘he’, ‘man’,
huMAN, huMANity all include women? But some apparent steps
forward have been made. One is the CRAC Lifestyle series booklet
‘Male and Female: choosing your role in modern society.’11 This is
an obvious response to the SDA and usefully counters some
stereotypes, including the ‘puzzle’ about the man who's driving his
son to school and has an accident. When the boy is rushed to
hospital for surgery the surgeon shouts ‘Oh God, it's my son’. The
surgeon is, of course, the child's mother, though unfortunately, as
there are so few women surgeons, it's pretty far-fetched. When I say
useful, I mean it's better than nothing, but that's as far as it goes. We
have an ideal challenge to sex roles – a boy who is a nurse – saying
‘soon I hope to be promoted to matron, or Nursing Superintendent’,
which is, of course, precisely what happens to men in traditionally
female occupations – they get promoted over the women. Some
challenge! We're told that top jobs are now open to women but
warned ‘Many top jobs demand a great deal from the ambitious man
or woman. Family life often has to take second place to the job. It
means staying later, working in your spare time, taking a lot of
responsibility, and often not having much time to enjoy yourself.’
What isn't recognised is that these drawbacks affect boys and girls
differently, that they are precisely the things that affect women.
Women and girls are expected to put the family first, can't stay late if
they've got kids, don't have any spare time – they've got two jobs
already, aren't supposed to be capable of taking responsibility, and if
you don't enjoy yourself, how do you ever meet boys in the first
place (what's it like, being the only one without a boyfriend? The
pressure is on). The authors also comment ‘When we choose jobs
we don't often think about how they will affect our families later on –
or even whether we get married at all.’ The ‘we’ here is absolutely
male – careers for girls are clearly determined by exactly these
questions: ‘How will this fit in with your family?’ Doing an ‘unfeminine’
job is risky, because it can make you less attractive to boys, and
ultimately endanger your chances of marriage – or so the story goes.
John Wellens, talking about engineering, points out that ‘a very
popular view is that engineering for girls is rather “butch” or at least
distinctly unladylike.’12 One woman careers officer I talked to, who
was keen to encourage girls to do ‘untraditional’ jobs, commented on
one girl who was doing bricklaying: ‘But to be honest she looks a bit
like a bloke. . . .’

Unfortunately, the answer to this problem isn't usually to challenge

what we mean by femininity; why should being a woman mean being
passive, not taking decisions; not doing anything strenuous – women
can't carry heavy weights? What about babies and young children?;
not doing anything potentially dangerous – what about chip pans
(most accidents happen in the home yet we don't think of it as a
dangerous place); always taking, never giving, orders? No, the
answer seems to be to prove that women in these jobs are just as
feminine as any others, and the Engineering Industry Training
Board's pamphlet on scholarships for girls goes as far as giving us
photographs just to show how attractive and ‘normal’ their girls are.
The same careers officer pointed out that one girl doing a craft
apprenticeship was ‘very, very capable and she could hold her own
and without not being a woman if you see what I mean, she was a
feminine girl.’ I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with being
attractive; just that everyone rushes to point out that women in
‘men's’ jobs are, as if it is necessary to justify their position in those
jobs in terms of their femininity. ‘Being feminine’ is almost a
requirement of the job. Do men who work in offices have to prove
that they're just as masculine as any other man? If a booklet was
produced about male nurses, with photos of them flexing their
muscles to prove how masculine they were, would it be seen in the
same way?
But to go back briefly to the booklet. In its discussion of family life
there is some attempt to deal with sharing housework, but this isn't
really considering work within the home as work. ‘Men are finding
that being a father is fun’ is nothing new, and certainly doesn't sound
like a description of full-time childcare. More like ‘that nice half hour
when they come home from work and play with the kids while mum
gets the tea ready’. The earth-shattering conclusion of the booklet
isn't new either. Things have really changed – the old formula
‘Women=Home, Men=Work’ is simply out of date. ‘Today,
Women=Home and Work; Men=Work and Home.’ So what's
changed? Women are wives and mothers who also have paid jobs,
men are breadwinners who also ‘help out’ at home. And what really
annoys me about this booklet is their announcement that ‘The
important thing is that YOU CAN CHOOSE.’

If there's one thing I've tried to argue in this article, it's that the jobs
girls do aren't simply a matter of choice. The EITB can offer girls
apprenticeships, but they can't make teachers and parents
encourage girls to take them. ‘One headmaster actually got up and
said that he would not encourage any of his girls to enter
engineering. ... He saw engineering as no environment for a girl,
especially in her formative years.’13 One girl I saw had qualified for
bricklaying, but her father refused to allow her to apply for jobs
because he said his mates would laugh at him if his daughter was a
bricklayer. Schools can encourage girls to get qualifications, but:
 it's very difficult to persuade them to stay on at school because
there's the attitude that it's only for a couple of years anyway. . . .
A number of parents I've met and I've said you know your
daughter is going to get 6 or 7 O levels and she's got a good
chance of going on say ‘well it's not important for a girl, is it?’
(careers officer)

I think there's a lot of lip service paid to the Sex Discrimination

Act, but nine times out of ten you know it's a boy's job or a girl's
job and though we don't agree with the system, that's what the
employers are taking. You can send him all the girls in the world
and you know he'll wait for a boy . . . male careers advisors in
this area see boys and women see the girls because the Careers
Service feel boys would probably go for an apprenticeship
anyway and girls were thinking of nursing probably or office work
and it's easier to learn and keep up with just half the amount of
jobs, instead of all of them. (careers officer, Teesside)

Employers have to advertise jobs as open to men and women, but

you can't force them to take women if they are determined not to.
Women with children can work full-time, but who's going to provide
the creche or nursery? And then there's boys:

I've never met a boy yet whose personal life affected him to the
same extent as a girl. Even girls going to college will choose one
near home so that they can see their boyfriends. The boys just say
you can come and visit; I've never known a boy choose say a
university near home for that reason.

Equal opportunities: do we really want them? Or, women who

want to be equal to men lack ambition.14

The conclusion is probably the most difficult part of this chapter to

write, because it raises so many questions, introduces problems, but
gives very few answers. Everyone's heard of the Sex Discrimination
Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Equal Opportunities Commission. And
not everyone's very happy with it. On the one hand there's the Daily
Telegraph wanting the laws abolished: ‘Let them Bake Cake’ – girls
should do ‘girls’ subjects’, it claims; or the Sunday Telegraph:

No society has ever been dominated ... by women, and it now

seems possible – even likely – that this male dominance is
engineered by biological forces that are not easily tampered with. .
. The sight of the (EO) Commission waving the SDA at nature's
inevitabilities is at once touching and hilarious. The real thing
being touched however is the taxpayer's pocket, and the joke is
hardly worth one and a half million pounds. (Peter Taylor on the
lunacy of the Equality Laws, 18 June 1978)

On the other hand, there's the Women's Liberation Movement. I've

already suggested that this legislation is worth very little more than
the paper it's written on. The Equal Pay Act allowed employers five
years before it became law to shuffle around with grades and jobs so
that women couldn't claim they were doing the same job as a man.
The Sex Discrimination Act recognises that girls in schools are
vulnerable to ‘discrimination’, but has no teeth to do anything about
it, and the Equal Opportunities Commission has proved itself ready
to back down on anything controversial:

Helen Whitfield wanted to take the boys’ craftwork classes. . . .

She was offered a place in the classes but turned it down saying
that she did not want to be made an exception; the classes should
be available to all girls. . . . Judge Perks ruled the treatment for
girls and boys was different but equal because boys were not
allowed to do needlework any more than the girls could take
woodwork. The case, which was the first of its kind brought under
the education section of the SDA, was originally backed by the
EOC. However it withdrew its support and this is now the subject
of legal action too. (The Times Educational Supplement, 22/2/80)
Equality is oh so respectable as long as you don't cause trouble.
But I'm not so sure I want to be ‘equal’, or that girls want to be
either. At the beginning of the article I suggested that our ‘failure’ in
the world of work isn't just because girls and women are stupid. I've
suggested lots of reasons why. But one of the most important
reasons seems to be that, although women are oppressed and
restricted through our roles as wives and mothers, our caring and
servicing, we might not want to swap that for ‘getting on’. The
business executive who eats, sleeps and lives work (in between
games of golf?), who walks over other people to get a better deal for
himself, or the car assembler who works overtime for the money, in
bad conditions, without much time for anything else – maybe we
don't want to be like that.15

Audrey Wise has suggested that one reason for female apathy
about equal pay is that women workers have seen how men in
exchange for high wages accept gruelling conditions of work,
productivity deals, and increased exploitation in all its forms, and
do not themselves wish to pay this price. Women tend to raise
issues related to the social conditions of work, adequate canteen
and toilet facilities, rest periods and child care provision. Equally
women employed in the professions tend to seek work they enjoy
and are not necessarily so anxious to reach the heights of the
profession as are men.

Marie: I don't mind so much about the money, but I want to work
somewhere warm and comfortable.
 Women are oppressed by the conditions we live with, by being
limited, stopped from doing what we want, by having to live up to the
image of femininity that men (whether employers, fathers, boyfriends
or the men who own the magazines we read) have created for us.
But we've also learnt a few things. Girls don't behave as they're
supposed to. Is it any more likely that we want what we're supposed
to want? Men seem to think we want what they've already got. But
do you? Do you just want to be in there with them?

Union official: We've been trying to encourage girls to go in for

building apprenticeships, but they're just not interested. Once they
realise it's not all glamour they drop out. You're your own worst
enemies – jobs like ours aren't glamorous, but women seem to
think they are.
Me: Do you take girls in groups?
Union official: No just one or two, that's all we get, and they soon
drop out.

I wonder why? The general impression I get from girls who have
tried these kinds of jobs is that they're lonely and oppressive. Do you
want to spend your working day surrounded by men cracking jokes
about women, page 3 or porno magazines, talking about getting their
leg over the night before, assuming you can't do the job, helping you
out maybe – with perfectly simple things any fool could do (except
women). Or being one of the lads – you don't mind if they swear
about other women, you're different, you've made it?
The alternative, which most girls ‘choose’, is to work with other
women, your mates, have a laugh, joke about the boss. After all,
what makes school bearable? Most girls I've talked to say it's their
mates, having a laugh, the things that make it more enjoyable to go
to school than stay home on your own – upsetting teachers, hiding in
the bogs, nipping off for a smoke. . . . Secretarial jobs are often seen
as providing the chance to meet men, being able to flirt with the men
who visit or work in the office; boys at school make life more
interesting, who fancies who, who's courting and who isn't. But
where would you be without your mates to talk to? Would it be the
same without the other girls?
 Again, I'm being a bit unfair. There are people in the EOC trying to
make changes. But the basic problem is that legislation doesn't
actually change fundamentally the conditions we live in. Women still
have the kids, and the responsibility to look after them, we still do
worse at school than boys, do different subjects (metalwork for girls
– jewellery making!), we're still expected to get married, have kids,
and put our families first. Women still have to make a choice
between a career and children, while men take for granted their right
to have both. Legislation doesn't alter people's responses to a
woman who does a man's job, and it doesn't change the power that
husbands and fathers have to stop us doing what we want to. I know
several girls and women who have dropped out of courses where
they were training to be things like mechanics, gardeners, HGV
drivers, engineers, because although we can, legally, enter those
courses, the law doesn't change the atmosphere. It doesn't alter the
fact that one or possibly two girls among twenty boys are going to
have a hard time. And it doesn't recognise that girls may not want to
compete on men's terms. Women do put families first, but one of the
reasons for this is that we know that people we care about, children
we have, are more important than the way we earn a living. That
enjoying your work is more important than earning a packet. That
there are more things to life than a nine to five day. That if ‘getting
on’ means getting on on the backs of other women, then maybe it's
just not worth it. We're all supposed to encourage girls and women
wanting to do traditional men's work. What about the position most
women are in, the work most women do, which is valuable and
important, but not recognised as such? Lots of women work in
‘service industries’ which are very badly paid because in many ways
they're an extension of what women already do, in the home:
cooking, serving meals, nursing, looking after children. But why
shouldn't we do jobs that involve other people and their needs and
why shouldn't we be well paid for them? Men have defined these
jobs as unimportant, basically because they don't do them. Why
should we accept that? The only way to have a real choice about
work is if all the jobs that women do, in the workplace or at home,
are seen as equally valuable and important, if we don't have to either
go out to work or stay at home, but can do both, if we no longer have
‘women's work’ and ‘men's work’. But it doesn't seem to me that the
way to achieve this is for the individual, ambitious, woman to make it
in a man's world. OK – she's a woman, but she must be an
exception. We need to make changes, though what kind of work,
what kind of future, what changes you want are questions I can't
answer. I can say that I don't want to make it as a woman in a man's
world, I want to be a woman in a woman's world. Maybe we ought to
change the world?

Suggestions

Changing the world takes time! So what do we do now! What kind of

careers advice should girls be getting? What kind of a job do you
want? I can't answer these questions, you can. My ideas go like this:
1 Most girls don't know about what jobs are available, and it's
important they all get the chance to meet people doing different jobs,
especially women. There's nothing more off-putting than a six-foot
bloke saying ‘girls can do my job’ – it doesn't make you feel
confident.
2 Particularly with unemployment, it's important to recognise that
it's really difficult to get any job at all and being unemployed isn't
your fault – it's the fault of the people who created the
unemployment in the first place.
3 It's also important for girls to have the chance to hear about and
talk about why getting ‘male’ jobs is difficult. It's no good just
throwing a girl in at the deep end and saying learn to swim – fast.
‘You want to be a mechanic? Great, just go along to this course’ just
isn't good enough. Girls can do these jobs, but girls don't, on the
whole. The important question is why.
4 It's difficult to answer this question with boys around. Girls and
women need our own space to work out our own ideas. We're
surrounded by men's ideas all the time, we don't need them there in
person as well. Boys giggling at the girls’ daft ideas just doesn't help.
Girls being able to come out with the ‘daft ideas’ and talk about them
together is what counts. Inside the girl who watches her boyfriend on
the pool table every night there could be a brilliant player just waiting
to get out, but she's not likely to find out if the ‘expert’ is watching.
Ideas aren't any different.
5 If you do want to do something like a craft apprenticeship, it's a
good idea to try and go with other girls. Groups of girls learning
together, with a woman teaching – like on the EITB girl
apprenticeship schemes – are more likely to be successful, enjoy
their work, and stick it out. You need someone to talk to, you can
discuss the problems (including the boys) with the other girls. ‘Girls
Rule OK’ is difficult to believe when there's only one of you; girls
together are together.
6 Skills – whether it's being able to repair your motorbike or wire a
plug – aren't something you have to learn only if you want to be a
mechanic or an electrician. They're things we need to know about to
do things for ourselves. We don't have to learn them in skill centres–
if you have a skill share it. If you want to learn find women who can
share their skills. Advertise. And being able to knit your own jumpers
is as important as being able to make your own shelves. Men
haven't got a monopoly on skill.
The point is, we can do things for ourselves, we can learn and
share, we can even make a living out of it – if we can do it together.
Notes
1 John Newsom, The Education of Girls, Faber, 1948.
2 Rosemary Deem, Women and Schooling, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
3 Ibid.
4 Glenys Lobban in Radical Education, 1978, no. 9.
5 Camilla Nightingale, ‘Sex Roles in Children's Literature’ in Conditions of Illusion, Papers
from the Women's Movement, 1972.
6 Tony Crowley, Choosing a Career, Careers Research & Advisory Centre (CRAC), 1972.
7 Michael Carter, Into Work, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1962.
8 Hilary Adamson, Starting Work, Industrial Society, 1972.
9 In Crowley, op. cit.
10 Jean Coussins, The Equality Report, National Council for Civil Liberties Rights for
Women Unit, 1976.
11 Anne Jones, Jan Marsh and A.G. Watts, Choosing your Role in Modern Society, CRAC,
1974.
12 John Wellens, ‘Girl technicians for engineering’, Industrial and Commercial Training, vol.
9, no. 3, March 1977.
13 Ibid.
14 From Spare Rib Diary, 1980.
15 Elizabeth Wilson, Women and The Welfare State, Tavistock, 1977.
5 They call me a life-size
Meccano set’:
super-secretary or super-slave?
Hazel Downing
Illustrated by Angela Amesbury

I worked as a secretary for three years and then went to university to

do a degree. I'm now writing a thesis on secretarial work. I'd like to
thank Glenys Pudney for suggesting this title.
Someone once suggested to me that if all the secretaries and typists
in the country went on strike for a week, the economy would
collapse. This power has remained unrecognised. Why? Well, you
might wonder, why on earth should they go on strike? The working
conditions are OK, the pay's not bad – well not that bad! – the hours
are fairly flexible and there are office parties; it's clean and there's no
one standing over you checking and timing your work all the time. In
any case, why rock the boat, especially if you're going to leave work
after a few years to have children, and after all, it is better than
working in a shop, or even a factory. Is it? I wonder.
A lot of girls, especially working-class girls, go into office work.
They choose this area to work in for various reasons. Possibly,
indeed quite probably, they've learnt shorthand and typing at school
and decided to use these skills to earn money. Maybe for women like
Janet, it wasn't really planned:

I couldn't decide what I wanted to do until I left school. I hadn't got

any real plans you know. I always fancied the idea of learning to
type, so I thought I'd go to college for a year and learn there. So
that's what I did. It's sort of like a last minute decision. (interview)

Maybe the advice came from the careers officer:

The careers officer came round and he said, ‘Well, you're quite
good at English and I think the best bet is if you do something like
audio-typing or something like that.’ Well I always did like
typewriters and things like that as a child. (interview with Josie)

Or maybe they were encouraged by parents who didn't want their

daughters to end up night cleaning, or working in a factory. ‘Do a
typing course love, you'll never be out of a job.’ Sensible advice.
Certainly, the sorts of arguments women have heard in the past, but
unfortunately, with the arrival of the silicon chip, no longer the type of
advice which is very realistic.
Over the last two years there has been a lot of publicity in the
newspapers and on television, devoted to the silicon chip, or, as it is
sometimes known, the ‘new technology’. Attitudes to this new
technology vary and depend to a great extent on one's interest in the
economy, in other words, whether one is an employer or an
employee.
Since 1978, the government has poured vast amounts of money
into research and development to encourage new applications of this
technology (microprocessors) on the grounds that failure to jump on
the bandwagon will mean that Britain Will Go To The Wall. When the
question of displacement of jobs through automation has been
raised, the government has shown its concern by vague, non-
committal responses, or by not responding at all. Then there is the
blind progress camp which welcomes this latest in a string of
technological advances over the past 200 years as the saviour of
Western civilisation – the silicon chip will, they argue, free us from
work and give us more leisure time. There is, however, a vast
economic and social difference between being freed from work and
being made unemployed, and it is precisely the problem of
unemployment and all that goes with it – poverty, deprivation,
powerlessness – that is of concern to the other end of the spectrum,
the trade union movement. As more jobs become automated, they
argue, and as the world economy sinks ever deeper into a recession,
then more and more people will be put out of work. Since
microprocessing technology is being applied to areas previously free
from automation, such as the service sector, areas which employ
large numbers of female workers, the majority of those affected will
be women.
Since 1951, the labour force in Britain has increased from 22.6
millions to 26.2 millions, an increase which is accounted for by an
expansion in the numbers of women, especially married women, in
paid employment. Women now make up 40 per cent of the total
working population and, all things being equal, the trend is likely to
continue. However, all things are not equal, especially women's
status and position in the economy. Too many people still consider
that women are more usefully occupied in the home, caring for
children and husbands, and that those women who go out to work do
so only for luxuries. But most women who work outside the home do
so because they have to. They may be single parents, either through
divorce, widowhood, desertion, or simply because they choose not to
marry, in which case they have no male breadwinner to rely on; or it
may be that they and their families simply cannot survive on one
wage. This does not mean that given the choice all working women
would rather stay at home. In contrast with the isolation of childcare
and housework, going out to work and at least enjoying the company
of other women is often a welcome escape.
Three million women, nearly a third of the total female labour
force, work in clerical and secretarial work. But the office, for so long
a nest of security – no lay-offs or redundancies, good pension
schemes – is the main target of automation through microprocessing
technology in the form of the word processor. The word processor, a
sophisticated typewriter with a memory; can do the work of 2½-5
typists and at the same time replace and render unnecessary skills
which have traditionally been the typist's stock in trade. Once she
has learnt to read off instructions from the display screen and which
buttons she has to press, the typist becomes little more than a
machine minder and her work output is monitored by the machine
itself. Evidence so far suggests that where word processors have
been installed in Britain roughly half the original number of jobs have
been lost.
Traditionally, workers in this country have not given up their jobs,
their rights to a livelihood and a living wage, without a fight, and that
fight has only been possible through collective struggle with other
workers in trade unions. In 1951, 45 per cent of all workers were in
trade unions; that figure has now reached 52 per cent, the increase
being primarily the result of a growth in trade union membership
among women; from 1,790,000 in 1951 to nearly 4 millions in 1976.
Despite this staggering growth, with the exception of the public
sector (local government and university clerical workers for
instance), women office workers still remain weak and largely non-
unionised. What then can we say about the future prospects of large
numbers of women in office work already, and those still at school
who expect to become office workers?
 This chapter will look at secretarial work in the light of the threats
to jobs and skills posed by microprocessing technology and will
address itself to the important question of why women office workers
remain so weak and badly organised. What is it about their work or
their position in society which stops them from recognising
themselves as workers? And what is it about this new technology
business which means they should?

Secretary wanted: must be slim, attractive, able to make coffee

and prepared to work for peanuts: a few myths

When I first started life behind a typewriter, fingers neatly poised

above ASDF (left hand) and: LKJ (right hand), I had already formed
an impression of secretarial work as clean, comfortable, in pleasant
surroundings, with no dirt, no health hazards and no hard slog.
That's not to say I thought it would be an easy ride. I was scared stiff.
How could I, muddle-headed as I was, ever become a super-
efficient, super-cool, super-competent secretary – for this was the
image I had created. My first ever experience of office work as a
temp in London didn't help either – I made so many mistakes, I had
to retype things four or five times so I took all my bad copies home
with me, wrapped up in a newspaper, because I thought someone
went round checking the bins every night.
My picture of secretarial life was formed as a result of a whole
mixture of influences: films, television serials, books, romantic girls’
magazines, and above all, advertising. The image goes something
like this: the brightly lit office is clean, full of potted plants, pleasantly
decorated with fitted carpets. There are no trailing wires, no toxic
fumes from stencil correcting or whitening fluids, no old-fashioned
wooden furniture to snag tights and clothes on. The secretaries, who
are all young and extremely attractive, inhabit individual offices with
neat desks, filing trays which say ‘in’ and ‘out’ and neatly sharpened
pencils. It is an image which is strongly encouraged by secretarial
colleges, as one secretary described:

This is another thing that upheld this belief that a secretarial job
was such a brilliant job to have. At the college, they were such
enthusiastic people – the typewriting teacher and the tutor: ‘Oh, it's
lovely to work in an office’ – type thing. And I got this huge
 impression that everyone ran around at top speed and were just
so totally efficient and there was no room for blunders, and you
just had to be spot-on all the time. So you came out of college
thinking, I can't really do this, because they really made you feel
you had to be really super-duper, an absolute brain, like a
machine, running around and being totally efficient and correct all
the time.... It really had this strange aura about it, because really I
still hadn't been into an office. When I got there, of course, there's
people who doddle along, there's lazy people, people who can't do
their jobs – you know, just ordinary people. (interview)

The secretaries in our fantasy office are all happy in their work,
ecstatic almost. They never rebel, never answer back (like at
school), and fall over backwards to please the boss, to fetch and
carry, developing an almost intuitive sense of when he wants another
cup of coffee and thus setting it neatly on his desk without spilling
any in the saucer just two seconds before he looks up from his
important business to ask for another cup. These secretaries always
know exactly what their bosses are doing at all times throughout the
day. They keep his diary up to date and are able to answer promptly
any enquiry regarding his whereabouts. They always remember to
give him messages, remind him of his family's birthdays, buy the
cards and order the flowers, so that, with these trivial, time-
consuming details dealt with, he can turn his mind to more important
matters. They are also extremely well groomed, never bite their
nails, never have chipped nail polish, never have holes in their tights,
or worn down heels, their hair is always clean and immaculately
groomed, their make up perfect with no left overs from the night
before. This is emphasised in all secretarial manuals:

As the secretary represents her employer and is in contact with

many of the firm's top-level executives she must wear clothes
which create a good impression. Her dress should be smart and
simple in design. Careful grooming is also very important and the
secretary should ensure that her shoes are highly polished, her
suit or dress meticulously pressed, and on arrival at the office first
thing in the morning she uses a brush so that no hairs remain on
 the shoulders. She should also adopt a neat hair-style, carefully
manicure her nails (avoiding vivid nail varnishes) and use her
make up discreetly and correctly. (J. Harrison, Secretarial Duties,
Pitman, 1962, p. 214)

And, of course, our secretaries are always polite and never swear –
ever. They never make typing errors, write shorthand at 120 wpm,
read it back perfectly and are capable of designing the perfect filing
system. Their lives are cushioned with flattery and praise from their
supermen bosses.
I suppose it is possible that this model bears some resemblance to
the reality of office life, but then it really depends on whose reality we
are talking about. The image of women as servants to men, taking
the blame for their mistakes, and protecting them as fervently and
lovingly as they would a sick child, is a picture created largely in the
minds of men. Nevertheless, it is a picture which reflects the position
of subordination which women occupy in our society.
My experience, and that of most secretarial workers I've spoken
to, creates a quite different picture. It is a picture which reflects low
pay; appalling promotion prospects (especially for working-class
women, black and white); noisy, dirty, badly heated and poorly lit
offices, even hazardous health conditions; sexual harassment;
humiliation, powerlessness and boredom. Once in a job, many
women recognise that, in practice, it has little in common with what
they anticipated. I'll now investigate why.

The reality: hierarchical control

Traditionally, organisations are pyramid-shaped. A carefully

constructed theory dating to the beginning of this century supplies a
model which goes something like this: there are a certain number of
tasks to be done in an organisation, whether in the production of
goods of services. These tasks are divided broadly into ‘thinking’
tasks and ‘doing’ ones and within these divisions there is a scale –
some thinking tasks are more difficult than others, some doing tasks
require more skills. Since, in any organisation there are usually more
doing tasks than thinking ones, there are inevitably more people
employed at the lower levels. In addition, since skills have to be
purchased at a high price, there is a tendency to decrease the price
(wages) by reducing the need for the skills either through machinery
(automation) or the further subdivision or fragmentation of particular
tasks into smaller components. As the old saying goes, ‘knowledge
equals power’ – a skilled worker with extensive knowledge of the
work has more power and is less easily replaceable than an
unskilled worker whose services can be readily dispensed with and
replaced by those of another unskilled worker. ‘De-skilling’ involves
stripping the worker of his/her skills and knowledge and, hence,
control and passing this knowledge into the hands of management.
So that, for instance, in manufacturing, instead of one highly skilled
person making a whole machine, the job is subjected to a time and
motion study by management and then divided up so that one
(unskilled) person will put a bolt in, the next will tighten it, and so on.
The same techniques have been applied to the office, with the
departmentalisation of office work. Productivity increases as
individual worker's skills and wages decrease.
 This is no myth. It is not based on some ‘natural’ state of affairs
because some people are stupid while others are clever, nor is it
something that just happened out of the blue. It was meticulously
worked out at the beginning of this century by a man called Frederick
Taylor in the USA as the most efficient way for a company to
increase its productive output, cheapen wage costs and increase
profits, and has strongly influenced managements in this country for
the last sixty years.
The office and secretarial hierarchies are no different. From the
bottom the hierarchy consists of:
1 Clerk typist – a mixture of clerical and typing duties, usually
invoice typing.
2 Copy-typist. Depending on the size of the organisation, she
would either be in a large pool or sharing a smaller office with three
or four other typists.
3 Audio-typist, considered higher than a copy typist, presumably
because she needs to be able to spell, and because she uses
machinery other than the typewriter. Highly productive from
management's point of view and more efficient than the next
category.
4 Shorthand-typist, usually working for several (usually) men, and
sharing an office with other typists. The work involves no
administrative duties and little contact with the boss, other than
taking dictation.
5 Secretary. Some people call themselves secretaries when their
work actually only fits the description of shorthand typist, or audio
typist, and many employers permit this status-enhancing self-
definition because they feel it ‘keeps them happy’ without giving
them a rise. In this category, status is dependent on whether the
woman shares an office with two or more, or with one secretary.
Those with their own offices occupy a higher position.
6 Personal/private/executive secretary or personal assistant (or, in
the days before the Sex Discrimination Act, ‘girl Friday’).
In addition, and not to be overlooked, is the fact that one's position
in the hierarchy is dependent on the status and position of the boss.
Even though they may be doing the same work, within any particular
organisation the Managing Director's secretary is accorded more
respect and status than the secretary to a mere manager, and is
likely to be expected to supervise her lower-level colleagues.
 Many women with experience of different offices recognise that the
divisions are meaningless, that a typist is a typist, whether she's
called copy typist or secretary. In fact, shorthand, which traditionally
served as a mark of distinction between the ordinary typist and the
secretary, is now being eliminated and replaced by audio typing,
which any typist can do. But despite the fact that every girl who
enters the office at the lowest rungs does not automatically proceed
up the ladder, the myth remains to buttress the illusion of secretarial
work offering an inbuilt career structure, a myth which is sustained
quite clearly in secretarial manuals, to quote from just two:

A top secretarial position is an excellent stepping-stone to many

interesting and remunerative careers in various fields. (Mary
Bosticco, How to be a Top Secretary, New English Library, 1975,
p. 9)

(It is) a magic carpet, an open sesame to a life full of interest – a

life with a complete fulfilment. (S. Hardwick-Smith and B. Rowe,
The Private Secretary, Museum Press, 1958, p. 6)

There's even a book by Bernard Marks of the Alfred Marks Bureau

called Once Upon a Typewriter which details the success stories of
twelve women who started life behind a typewriter:

The twelve whose stories are told here demonstrate the

opportunities that lead to careers in politics, publishing,
broadcasting, banking, journalism and many other areas often still
regarded as being a male province – such as industrial
management. (Bernard Marks, Once Upon a Typewriter, Arrow,
1974, p. 1)

Certainly some women do make the top, but as Polly Toynbee

commented in Cosmopolitan (December 1974):

You might just as well do some research into the number of black,
hunchbacked, left-handed orphans of the Jewish persuasion who
had made a success in the world, and because you found a
 handful, conclude that they, too, were not at a disadvantage after
all.

Whatever position one holds in the hierarchy, the work remains

fundamentally the same – shorthand or audio and typing. However,
the higher one gets, the proportion of time actually spent on these
technical skills (for which one is ostensibly being paid) decreases.
Job descriptions very rarely accompany secretarial jobs. If they do,
then they demand shorthand/audio typing, general office duties,
such as filing and then, tucked away at the bottom, a tiny undefined
etcetera. Ms Bosticco describes it slightly differently:

It is simply that technical skills are not enough . . . Impeccable

shorthand and typewriting are simply one indispensable weapon to
enable you to enter the fray. In order to stay in the battle and reap
a victory in the form of a top job, other, far more intangible
qualities, are required. (How to be a Top Secretary, p. 150)

It is the etcetera which requires that the secretary be female, for it

includes those ‘intangible qualities’ and the performance of tasks
which cannot be job-defined for they are duties which every woman
is expected to perform by the very nature of her womanhood, a state
of being which she has spent most of her life perfecting – almost like
an unpaid apprenticeship. The secretary is expected to make coffee,
run personal errands, water plants, organise
leaving/wedding/birthday presents, and even sew on buttons for the
boss. She is expected to be caring, tactful, sensitive to his moods,
patient, protective and tidy – in short she is there to make his life
easy and comfortable, protect him from unwanted visitors, lie to
cover for his mistakes and make him feel important. Of course, these
duties may be, and often are, a break in the routine of typing and can
be used as an excuse to leave the office for half an hour, but at the
same time they clearly reinforce the woman's subservient role and
act as a direct slap in the face for those women who go into
secretarial work with the expectation of a challenging career.

Control through class and race

The problems faced by all women in the struggle for a decent, well-
paid, possibly even interesting job are difficult to overcome, but if you
happen to be black and working-class then the hurdles you face are
almost insurmountable. Black women in Britain (as in all white-
controlled societies) are concentrated in the worst jobs in terms of
pay and conditions of work (to say nothing of job satisfaction and
promotion prospects). And even those with shorthand and typing
qualifications have to confront racist discrimination by employers.
In the USA, where affirmative action legislation requires employers
with government contracts to make extra efforts to hire and promote
women and minorities (blacks and other ethnic groups), it is not
uncommon for black women to be put in the lowest paid jobs and
then located in a back room somewhere out of sight of clients and
customers. As offices in the USA are moving more quickly towards
automation than in this country, the numbers of lower skilled
machine operating jobs have increased, widening the gap between
‘top’ jobs performed by whites and the low-level jobs largely
performed by blacks. As one book on American office workers
describes the situation:

Racism is . . . clearly visible to anyone who walks through a big

office company. Pretty, young, white women work as private
secretaries in the carpeted offices of the new [city centre]
buildings. Black clericals are mainly reserved for the key-punch
room, the typing pool, or the data processing center across town –
the routine, pressurized, low-paid jobs. (Jean Tepperman, Not
Servants, Not Machines: Office Workers Speak Out, Beacon
Press, 1976, p. 49)

In this country, some black women get so tired of the inevitable

prejudice which they encounter at interviews that they are forced to
resort to the less secure, although in some instances more highly
paid, practice of temping, but even this is no real solution. Despite
the Race Relations Act which was designed to prevent discrimination
against racial minorities, some temporary employment agencies
permit the most blatant racist discrimination on the part of their
employer clients. An ex-interviewer from a temporary agency had
this to say:

In some agencies, to my knowledge, if a client did not want

coloured people, it was put down as ‘no suntan’ or ‘no accents’
wanted. I would say the agencies themselves in one way or
another were breaking the law to keep clients or trying to make
money because the whole object of agencies quite honestly is
money, money, money. (BBC Radio 4, August 1977)

Another ex-agency worker suggested that the discrimination

extended to Irish women as well.
While it is assumed that secretarial skills can enable working-class
girls to move ‘up in the world’ and into high-powered jobs, such
mobility depends, as I said before, less on technical skills, but rather
more on the individual's ability to adapt to a system of values which
completely devalues and negates her own background and culture.
She must first of all learn to manipulate and develop what are clearly
middle-class modes of femininity (those intangible qualities again) in
order to attain an air of gentility and blend in harmoniously with the
professionalism of office life.
Apart from interaction with teachers and other professionals in
positions of authority, working-class girls will have had little close
personal contact with middle-class people by the time they leave
school, and start their first jobs. The first encounter can be quite a
shock as Susan describes:

At the time of taking my first job I was from a working class

background with little perception of the values and behaviour of
other social classes. . . . The education I had received by the time
I was 16 . . . was of a very limited nature, and the secondary
modern school I attended played a vital role in determining what
kind of job I would obtain after leaving school. My last year of
school was mainly concerned with acquiring shorthand and typing
skills. . . . My first job as a junior shorthand typist at a chartered
accountants professional office was when I first encountered a
different class of people whom I integrated with because of the
 work we had in common. It was not just the chartered accountants
that were from a middle class background, but also many of the
secretaries, and I felt that they had an education and self-
confidence which was lacking in myself. I was not equipped to
answer at my interview such a question as to how much money I
should receive and the lowly wage that I was paid was a
consequence of this process of manipulation.
My work consisted of cleaning the vending machine, running
errands and typing letters concerning firms that had gone bankrupt
or into liquidation. Having not been given any background
knowledge on factors relating to bankruptcy and liquidation I was
completely disinterested in the work and approached it in a
mechanical fashion. The different class background from myself
that most of my superiors came from served to exacerbate the
lowly position of my job, and although I did become very friendly
with many of the people who worked there I could not overcome
the superiority which emanated from them and they did not regard
me as having the ability to talk on an intellectual level. (written
statement)

Most offices, especially professional establishments, are imbued

with middle-class values, values which are kept alive by the
supposed middle-class nature of ‘mental’ work. This may once have
been true, but is no longer an apt description of the type of routine,
mundane nature of many of the clerical and secretarial jobs
performed by women. Keypunching is the best example of the type
of job which cannot easily be fitted into the category of ‘mental’ work
and the same is true of the vast majority of typing jobs. Objectively,
these jobs are comparable with routine, assembly-line factory work,
but the aura of professionalism within which they are performed
precludes their subjective comparison.
Faced with an apparent choice, the working-class girl can attempt
the ascent of the hierarchy, or stay where she is. The top jobs will
still go to the women who have the confidence and socially
acceptable language and accent acquired through a middle- or
upper-class background and education. Among these are women
who have bypassed the lower rungs by taking a university degree
and, finding they are unemployable, go on to take secretarial
courses. Their university degree endows them automatically with a
certain status, the assumption being that university education equals
intelligence. The top jobs are reserved for these women who,
however, discover perhaps more quickly that the ladder is short and
the ceiling low.

Where do you want it, love, under the table? Sexual harassment
or flattery?

The ‘intangible qualities’ referred to earlier combine to make up a

sexual and social stereotype. In other words, the secretary must
‘look the part, act the part, and sound the part’ – the part itself being
difficult to define because it is rooted in common sense, class-
specific ideas about femininity.
The old double standards about women's behaviour apply in the
office as elsewhere in society. The secretary is expected to dress
fashionably but with decorum; she is expected to exude an air of
femininity and sensuality and yet not be overtly sexual. Women who
become the object of men's sexual fantasies because of daring or
sexually explicit clothing would be considered by these same men to
lower the tone of the office. While they may joke and use explicitly
sexual double meanings with the ‘girls in the pool’, their own
secretaries, like their wives, must somehow mask their sexuality
beneath a veil of madonna-like purity. At the same time, however,
some women are forced to leave because of sexual overtures by
their bosses and one woman I spoke to was fired because she
refused to sleep with her boss.
While sexual encounters or office affairs are often based more in
the imagination than in reality, almost every woman I've spoken to
has experienced some form of sexual harassment. Harassment of
this type takes many forms from simply being leered at, to being
forced to listen to the sordid details of a man's sexual exploits, to
actual physical assault, the former being perhaps more difficult to
‘prove’, as described by Carolyn:
 You know that men are flirting with you – they're being flirtatious
and patronising and you're the little girl. It's the tone of voice in
comparison to one speaking to male associates that irritates you –
that's part of the reason why I hate office work . . . when you go
down the hall, if there's a group of men who are meeting and
you're the only woman walking down that hall, and you hear these
little comments, right? They stop talking. There they are carrying
on a conversation and you walk by and they stop talking and you
hate it. You hate it so much and there's nothing you can do about it
because they're not doing anything.... If they would do something,
then you could come back with a good retort.

Sometimes they do do something. Marion's first day at a job in

Birmingham:

I was introduced round the other directors and the main people in
the company and I was taken down by two of the secretaries who
were very pleased to have a reasonably attractive secretary to
show around. And these other secretaries who I didn't actually mix
with were into this sort of double conversation – they really
enjoyed it! It must have kept them going for some reason. And this
one guy I met, I was literally taken into the room, there were a
couple of people there with him – a couple of guys he wanted to
show off to, and he shook my hand and said hello, what's your
name and my name's so and so and then he says, ‘Right, now
we're acquainted, where do you want it – under the table or in the
board room?’ And that was my first day.

So how does one respond? Take the matter to an industrial tribunal

and complain of sexual harassment? How do you prove it? What
about backing and support as an individual? Anyway, as in many
rape trials, it's usually assumed to be the woman's fault – she's
probably encouraged it by wearing provocative clothing. Besides, in
the office, it's part of the routine – just another joke to get through the
day! Let's see how Marion dealt with it. What did she say?

It's difficult to know what to say. That's the situation always. You've
got to work with them, they can make things really difficult, and
 also if you draw attention to the fact that you're disgusted by it or
just didn't like it, it makes them do it even more. I just ignore them,
that's the best reaction I've found, just ignore them.

Yes, but they won't go away and they can make things difficult. Why
ruin a man's career for the sake of a secretary? Deny the allegations
and close ranks. That's what Marion realised – she didn't have a leg
to stand on. Nor could she count on the support of other secretaries.
As she pointed out to me, when she first took over the job, the office
was buzzing with stories about an affair her predecessor was alleged
to have had with the tool room manager, stories spread by men and
women alike in the office. She later found out the stories were
untrue, just office gossip. As she said: ‘Every job I've had I've found
out later I had an affair with someone.’
On the other hand, it should also be emphasised that, taken on
their own, double meanings and sexually implicit conversations can
be seen as relatively harmless and are engaged in by women as well
as men as one of a number of distractions to get through the day
with. I've seen several rising young executives blush bright red as a
result of sexually explicit teasing by a group of women, an exercise
which often grows directly from a feeling of solidarity and shared
interests which, despite rivalry, often exists amongst women who
work together in offices. However, physical sexual harassment by
men is not harmless and reinforces very clearly the subordination of
women.

Loyalty and rivalry: divide and rule

The typical one to one boss/secretary relationship can only work as

long as the secretary maintains a feeling of loyalty to her boss. If she
does her work well, she receives flattery and can be made to feel
indispensable. She complies and adapts. As all decisions are made
by him, her individuality and personality are subordinated to his. He
may be enlightened and give her some responsibility, but here her
domain of decisions will probably be limited to choosing which type
of coffee to buy or which colour flimsy to use for the correspondence
file. He produces the ideas which she reproduces on paper. He
commands, she obeys. If she sees him doing something wrong and
suggests an alternative, this must be done with tact to allow him to
assume it as his original idea. Or as the manual advises:

You must understand your employer. Study him closely: tread

warily during the first few weeks; get to know his likes and dislikes,
his every mood. Find out the best time to interrupt him, if interrupt
him you must. Gradually adjust your methods of working to fit in
more easily with him. A lack of understanding of your employer will
mar your success as a secretary. (S. Hardwick-Smith and B.
Rowe, The Private Secretary, p. 13)

At the same time, however, stories abound of secretaries who

actually do their boss's job without actually being paid for the added
responsibility. This indeed would be impossible; to acknowledge
such a situation would immediately explode the myth of the boss's
superior intellect if it were found that a mere woman could do his job.
One woman, for instance, found herself having to teach her boss's
job to his successor. Despite the fact that it would have made more
sense for the woman to take over the job, it was clearly felt that it
should go to a man.
If the secretary complains, or becomes dissatisfied, or decides that
she doesn't like her boss, then the relationship must break down and
she must leave and find another job – such is the extent of job
security in secretarial work.
Generally, an illusion of status within the hierarchy and the status
she acquires from her employer's position within the company can
be sufficient to guarantee her loyalty and hence isolation from other
women office workers. Her loyalties then are to management and the
company, but not to her co-workers. Rivalry between women in
society generally is encouraged in the interests of men, and in the
working environment it serves the purpose of control. If women are
divided among themselves, there is little likelihood that they will
combine and begin to make economic and other demands of
management.
 Of course, some women don't even consider ‘promotion’ a remote
possibility. Not because they aren't ambitious, but because they
recognise the limitations of the career structure and, if they have
children, they are likely to have heavy domestic responsibilities
which make it difficult to take on a demanding job. Having
recognised that there is little satisfaction in the actual work they are
doing, they look for other sources of satisfaction, such as the
company of other women. Attempting to ascend the ladder, for
instance, does not present itself as a real choice, because becoming
someone's secretary involves exchanging what can be a friendly
cosy atmosphere with a group of women one can relate to, for the
isolation of an office with only a man for company – a man whose
status in the company, whole cultural, social and economic interests
put him clearly out of reach as a confidant. It would be highly unlikely
for a man to have the vaguest sympathetic understanding for his
secretary's personal problems and concerns.
The boss/secretary relationship is, then, dependent on loyalty,
where the woman is urged and encouraged by the nature of the job
to maintain a level of confidence and distance. The isolated nature of
the job means that women are divided from one another and less
likely to think of unionisation. Age also divides. Older women react
against ‘those young kids who don't want to work because they're
more interested in dressing up’ and younger women resent ‘those
old biddies who think they own the place’. Of course, young women
with no family commitments can afford to buy clothes and spend
time and money on their appearance, a luxury denied women with
children. This type of rivalry between women of different ages is
maintained by the image of offices as populated by ‘pretty young
things’ vying for attention as the best dressed, most attractive and
popular with the men, and the fastest typist. In fact, in one job I had
as a typist in an office with three other typists, I actually found myself
listening to their typing and almost unconsciously trying to type faster
than any of them, until I realised I was simply increasing the firm's
output.
The ‘frivolous’ attitude which some older women attribute to
younger ones has some basis in reality. If they are single and
childless, it is possible for women to take a less than serious attitude
towards work, on the one hand because many do not see
themselves as waged workers for the rest of their lives, relying on
the intervention of marriage and children to take them away from it
all. On the other hand their chances of changing jobs are greatly
increased because many employers prefer them to older women.
Not only because they like to have their offices adorned by ‘pretty
young things’ but because they can pay them less. In addition, when
firms want to reduce their staffs by ‘natural wastage’ – a method
which is gaining increasing respectability by firms wishing to
introduce word processors – they can always rely on younger
women leaving more frequently either to get married or have
children.
A classic example of the way in which women are encouraged to
compete and at the same time be exploited is in the area of salaries.
Most firms discourage employees from discussing their salaries with
colleagues. Others make it a condition of employment. To illustrate, I
quote from my employment contract with a large chemical firm:
‘Since questions of salary are handled with extreme confidence in
this company, you will only discuss your salary with your immediate
superior.’ The process of asking for a raise is one which can cause
extreme embarrassment and one which a woman I know preferred to
avoid than have to admit that she couldn't survive on twenty-eight
pounds a week (in 1979!). In the end, many women are forced to
change jobs in order to get a salary increase. By keeping salaries
secret, each individual employee can be led to assume she/he is
earning more than everyone else. At the same time, there is the
threat of not really wanting to know how much the others earn for
fear of finding out someone doing the same job is earning more, an
obvious indication that the other person is more highly regarded.

Women, microprocessing technology, and unemployment

In 1974 there were 101,400 unemployed women. By February 1979

that figure had increased to 363,480, plus 32,060 women registered
as seeking part-time work, but not claiming unemployment benefit –
a figure which does not, therefore, register in unemployment
statistics. In addition, many married women do not register at all as
unemployed and according to the Department of Employment, they
could number 175,000. Unemployment among women is a trend
which is likely to increase, not only because of the decline in
industries, such as textiles, clothing, and footwear, which have
traditionally employed large numbers of women, but also as a direct
result of cutbacks in public sector expenditure affecting education,
the social services and the health service.
With two in five women workers employed in clerical and
secretarial jobs, it is impossible to overstate the importance of office
work to women – not in terms of job satisfaction or as an ideal job,
but, in the climate of increased and increasing unemployment, as
one of the few sectors of employment where women have been
reasonably certain of getting jobs.
The purpose of introducing word processors and related office
equipment is not to lighten the load of office workers, as is argued by
manufacturers and employers, but to render more efficient what is
and traditionally has been a costly and highly labour-intensive
employment sector, i.e. it has relied on the employment of large
numbers of people and rather less on machinery. Machinery, if cheap
enough to install, can be more cost-effective than people, as is the
case now with word processors. Their introduction may make some
jobs more interesting and, of course, there is the novelty of working
with a highly advanced piece of equipment, but for the majority who
will be required to operate the machines, work will become more
boring, routine and intensified, with none of the distractions usually
offered in traditional office environments, such as the option to talk to
workmates. Perhaps it would be more useful to allow a word
processor operator to speak for herself. Carole worked for five years
as a WP operator in the world's largest bank in San Francisco:

CJ: Secretarial people didn't like the WPs because they already
had the skills and the pay, but it was the novelty. You know,
everybody was excited to learn this new thing that was going to
help alleviate boredom and make life easier and then they found
out that they really didn't do that at all – in fact they made it more
boring.
 HD: Can you say why they made it more boring?
CJ: Because people felt that they were plugged into machines,
that they were appendages to machines rather than people
performing functions with other people.
HD: Is that true for the clerical and the secretarial workers?
CJ: Yes, very much so. We used to have jokes about how we
expected that soon they'd chain us to our desks and give us
catheters so we'd never have to go the bathroom. And the thing is
that once word processing or video display equipment is
introduced, it's possible to keep track exactly of the amount of
productivity each individual displays and set raises and
evaluations accordingly. And people feel very pressured to get out
their production. The standards are raised. When I first started at
the bank the standards were 8,000 keystrokes an hour and when I
left they were 12,000 over a five-year time period.

While job loss does not cause grave concern in the USA, the
situation in Britain is quite different. Where word processors have
been introduced, the result has been drastic reductions, in some
cases by half, in the numbers of jobs available. These reductions
have not been achieved simply by making people redundant – a
move which would certainly cause conflict – but through the less
conspicuous method of ‘natural wastage’. When women leave on
retirement, to get married, or have children, or, as in some cases,
because managements exert pressure on them to leave by making
life difficult at work, then those jobs are not filled. The ultimate impact
is then felt mainly by school leavers who find they just do not have a
job to go to where they can use their secretarial skills, or by women
who plan to return to paid work when their children are older.

Are unions the answer?

Many women would argue no. Unions have traditionally been male-
dominated and at times openly hostile to women workers, even
where they work alongside them. The whole union structure is very
alienating to women, not just because the language and
organisational procedure of union meetings is a completely
masculine affair, but also because meetings are usually held in the
evenings when women with children have other pressing
responsibilities and when women without would rather go to a disco
than sit on a hard chair in a cold hall in boredom.
In addition, white-collar workers often consider themselves above
that type of activity, equating unionisation with industrial workers,
preferring to negotiate with their employers as individuals. But as
we've seen, individual negotiating is no guarantee against low pay, in
fact it just reinforces it. Many firms have staff associations or special
committees made up of personnel officials and departmental
representatives which then meet to discuss grievances. But the
types of grievances taken up remain at a level at which
managements can readily agree to changes without threatening their
profit levels. Some firms even resort to changing titles, one large
company in the East Midlands now refers to all its workers as
‘associates’, giving them the impression that they have a real stake
in the company with no improvement in wages.
The effect of staff associations and individual attention is to keep
workers in ignorance of their true interests. Employers are extremely
hostile to unionisation in offices, not just because outside negotiation
would threaten the friendly family atmosphere of the firm, but
because collective bargaining through the impersonal medium of a
trade union on behalf of its members in the company would by its
nature threaten managerial control.
Interestingly enough, it is in those organisations, such as local
government and the public sector generally, where close working
relationships have been almost totally replaced by the alienation of a
bureaucratic structure, where unionisation among women office
workers is strong.

Conclusion

I have tried, in the limited space available, to describe the nature of

secretarial work, and to point towards the ways in which certain
features of the work act as constraints on unionisation. The various
ways in which women are divided from one another along class, race
and age lines render them easier to control; such divisive tactics act
as an obstacle to the perception of their common interests as
workers which cross these barriers. Managements also encourage
the development of the feeling of indispensability on the part of
individual women workers, in the attempt to foster loyalty towards
individual bosses or departments and through them towards the
company or organisation. A reward system is perpetuated which
offers status as opposed to financial gain.
I have perhaps neglected to emphasise strongly enough the real
feeling of solidarity which exists among women office workers,
especially those sharing an office, perhaps because this feeling is
rarely channelled into activities which challenge managerial control
over such important issues as wages and the organisation of work.
The time has now come, however, when jobs in office work are
being threatened by automation. Given the fairly gloomy picture I
have painted of the office, it appears contradictory that I should now
be arguing the case for the defence of those jobs in the face of the
changes offered by automation. But if the choice is unemployment,
then it seems to me sound economic sense to defend any job
against no job at all.
Male-dominated unions will initially be concerned with defending
the traditional rights of the male breadwinner. The idea that women's
place is in the home is still prevalent in the minds of many people
and in a period of high and increasing unemployment gains new
credibility. And yet, many women are sole breadwinners. If unions do
not take effective steps to defend women's jobs and demand the
right to control the introduction of this new technology, and fight the
likely result in unemployment amongst women, then women will
have to move themselves and begin to recognise their status as
workers.
If women wish to preserve their hard-won rights to (albeit limited)
financial independence, through paid employment, then the only
solution is collective organisation with other women – trade unions
will only cease to be male-dominated when women join and change
them from within to defend their interests as working women.
6 ‘Now that I'm married . . .’
Dorothy Hobson

I went to university when my son went to school. This chapter is

based on work which I did talking to young women about their lives
at home. One of the areas of their lives which they enjoyed most was
radio and television. I am now looking at how these programmes are
produced and explicitly at how women and their families understand
and enjoy them.

DH: ‘Is being married or being a mother as you expected it would

be?’
Pat: ‘I never really thought about it.’
DH: ‘Did you have any ideas about how it would be before you got
married?’
Pat: ‘All a bed of roses! [laughs] They soon changed.’

This chapter is about young women at home with small children or

babies and consists mainly of them talking about their lives now that
they are married. They also talk about their lives at school and the
period when they worked before they were married. Because the
women are quite young, aged between nineteen and twenty-one,
although one is a little – older twenty-eight – they all remember very
clearly their feelings when they were at school and how they then
thought about their future jobs and marriage and babies. What is
clear when they are talking, is that there are certain choices which
they made, which they would perhaps change if they were to make
those choices now. What is important is the regret which they have
for things which they have lost, particularly their best friends and the
freedom to go out when they want to. Now that they are married with
a husband and young children, they have to a certain extent,
achieved what they wanted and what they were brought up to
believe was the ‘right thing for a girl to want’, but now they find that
they have lost some of the most enjoyable aspects of their lives. This
is not to say that they are unhappily married or that they regret
getting married and having children, but rather that they feel that
there should be more to their lives.

It is perhaps best to begin with a short description of who the

women are and how I come to be writing about them. A couple of
years ago I was involved in research which was concerned with
talking to women at home with young children, about their lives now
and how their present experiences were different from when they
were younger – at school, or at work, before they had children. In
fact, for some of them the ending of work happened at the same time
as getting married and becoming mothers, for they had been
pregnant when they had married and this, of course, had had a
significant effect on their decision to get married. All of the women
had been born in Birmingham, so from one point of view, they were
lucky in that their families and often their husband's families were
never too far away. Yet this seemed to make little difference to their
chance to do things which they wanted to. Your mother may be
willing to babysit for you to go out with your husband, but she may
be less willing to sit for you to go out with your girl friend; not
because she would necessarily disapprove, but because she may
feel that it is unwise to encourage her daughter to do anything which
might cause trouble between her daughter and her husband!
When they had been at work, the young women had jobs in shops,
clerical or filing jobs in offices, or assembly work in factories. These
had not always been the jobs which they had thought they might like
to do when they were at school. Then, they had ambitions to be
hairdressers, nurses, secretaries, but they had forfeited those
ambitions when they met their boy friends, often even before they
left school. Since they had left work they were living in flats or
houses and their lives had changed dramatically. Although they all
lived on large council estates, they had few if any friends, and they
all felt very isolated. Apart from the company of their children, they
were often alone in their homes, without anyone to talk to, for long
periods of the day and sometimes the evening. True, they were free
to do their housework and shopping when they wanted to and did not
have to ‘obey a boss’, as their husbands may be doing at work, but
this freedom was at the expense of losing what was most important
to them – the company of other people. I hope that this article will not
be depressing to girls who, like the women I have talked to, may see
marriage and a family as their future career. What I hope is that they
may see the need to retain their friends and hold on to their own
interests as well as seeing their future in terms of their marriage and
family.
School

DH: Did you like school?

Linda: No [laughs]. No, I used to hate it.
DH: What did you specially hate about it?
Linda: It was being there – if you could have took the work home
I would have been alright, but being there, people watching over
you, you know, you couldn't do anything wrong.
DH: Was it, I mean, is the school strict?
Linda: No, not really no. Now I've left sometimes I wish I was back
there.
DH: Why do you wish that?
Linda: I miss everybody, you know, we was all close in our form,
there's a few live round here now, you know, by us, but it's not the
same.

Linda's comments about school are similar to other women whom I

talked to. Because school is now somewhat distanced from them, it
is not the actual work of school which they talk about, nor the
teachers, nor the day-to-day matters of school life, which may be
what girls who are still at school would talk about; what she
remembers and regrets is the loss of her friends. This theme
continues when women talk about their experience of work – it is
again their friends at work whom they miss. The women whom I
talked to had all seen school as something to be ‘got over’ before
they left to start work. Then work, in its turn, became something to
be ‘got over’ before the real work of marriage came. Now they saw
the business of bringing up their children as something to be ‘got
over’ before they could return to work. It was as if they were always
wanting to get the current part of their lives over in the hope that
things would be better later on. Yet they looked back with happiness
to the time when they were free to go out with their friends, before
they married.

Class and jobs

All the women I talked to were working-class, their parents had been
working-class, their husbands had working-class jobs but most
importantly, they had gone through the experience of school with
their class and sex crucially affecting both their experience of school
and the way in which they thought about their jobs when they left
school. When they had left school they had all taken jobs which can
be seen as typical for working-class girls. In the following extracts
Anne is talking about her feelings when she was at school. She was
not typical of the women I talked to because she had passed the 11-
plus examination and gone to a girls’ grammar school. However, far
from giving her the opportunity to think she could move into a better
job when she left school, she had spent her time at school feeling
inferior to the other girls in her form and this has seemed to act
against her and made her feel that she could not do the same school
work as they could.

KEY TO TRANSCRIPTS

... pause, also (pause)

( ) non-verbal communication e.g. (laughs)
[ ] comments from the interviewer, e.g. [mm], [yes]
(...) passage edited out

ANNE

D: Did you like it at school?

A: No, not really.
D: What didn't you like about it?

A: Er, they was a different class from me to be quite honest, [mm],

erm, they were all quite snobs (laughs) [yes], and I'm not, I've not
got a very good background, I'm the only one out of seven that
went to a grammar school and my mother couldn't afford to buy
me all the extra things that these other people had [yes], you
know, I mean they always had their hair done nice and, they have
everything in the school uniform, you know [mm], I just had to
make do [yes]. It made me miss school a lot. I just didn't fit in
 really [no]. D: When you left school did you have any idea about
what you were going to do?
A: Er, no. I always knew I'd end up in a factory because at school,
you know, ‘Careers’ – they always used to go on, ‘You've gorra
find something to do.’ But I hadn't got any idea. You know,
everybody else wanted to be nurses, and all these special things,
but I didn't feel I'd got the ability really. I didn't think that I would
pass any exams [mm], because you know, I just didn't try anyway,
so I thought, ‘Well it's not worth me thinking of anything else.’

Anne had felt so conscious of her working-class background, being

different from the other girls at school, that it had actually worked
against her and made her doubt her own abilities, even though she
realised now that she must have been as ‘good’ as the others when
she took the 11-plus exam and passed.
The other women in the study had all been to secondary modern
or comprehensive schools. In some cases they had had ambitions to
try to get more interesting jobs when they left school, but they had
eventually abandoned those ambitions and taken the conventional
jobs for working-class girls: in offices, shops or factories. Their
experience of comprehensive education had not made them have
ambitions for jobs which could be termed as middle class. Some of
them had wanted to become hairdressers or nurses, but even these
ambitions had been lost and they had in their own words ‘ended up
in an office’ or as Anne says ‘I always knew I'd end up in a factory’.
Often their parents had tried to encourage them to stay on at school
or had offered to pay for them to do some training after they had left
school. Betty talks about the way she chose her job.

BETTY

D: Er, when you first started work, or before you started work and
you were at school, who decided what job you were going to do?
Was it mainly you or did your parents have very much to do with
it?
B: No, I think it was mainly me, ‘cause me mum wanted me to go
in an office and I didn't want to, I wanted to go in a shop or
something. First of all I wanted to go into hairdressing and I was
 doing that for a year before I left school, just on a Saturday, [mm],
and then I thought, ‘I don't really like it.’ It was long hours and I
think the wages were only about £2.00 per week then. There was
awful long hours and I went off the idea and the shop I was going
to, me dad had to pay £100 for me to start anyway [yes]. Well he
was prepared to pay the £100 for me but then I thought, ‘Well what
if I changed me mind and I don't like it.’ You know, after I'd been
there a bit. (. . .) So I didn't go in the hairdressers, I got a job in
town instead [mm].

Although her father was willing to pay the fee for her to begin
working in the hairdressers, she was worried that she may want
more money when she was working and she also was worried that
she might ‘change her mind’, after her father had paid.
A more common reason why the women I had talked to had
changed their mind about any ambitions which they had for jobs after
they had left school had been the crucial factor of meeting a boy,
who in some cases they had later married. The moment they started
‘going steady’ or ‘courting’ was the time when they changed their
ambitions, or perhaps realised their real ambition, which was to get
married. When she was at school, Pat had ambitions to join the Air
Force, but these were abandoned when she met her future husband
just before she left school.

PAT

D: Did you work when you left school?

P: Yes, I worked in, I was going to join, I had me heart set on
joining the Air Force but, er (laughs), I met me hubby and things
went from there.

It was as if her real ‘career’ was ‘marriage and motherhood’ and

once she met the man she later married, there was no need to
continue with her ambitions for an alternative ‘career’. Pat had
‘accepted’ her future seemingly even before she left school.

D: Had you left school when you met him?

 P: No, I was just sixteen when I met him and I was sitting my
exams and, er, I was sixteen and four days old when I met him.
(laughs)
D: So what job did you do then?
P: Well, I worked in a chemists, and then I worked in Curry's in
Martineau Way in town [yes], as a stock control clerk, and then we
were married not long after that, while I was working there and he
was sent to Germany and I sort of went out there.

Pat's husband was in the army and she went abroad with him, but
she never realised her own ambition to join the Air Force.

Leisure

Lorna: I've got three friends, girls [mm], one's getting married
soon, but the other two they're still single, they still go out a lot,
and I miss all that (laughs).

The loss of the freedom to go out with their girl friends, to do what
they want in their spare time, is the thing which the women in my
study missed the most. It is also the aspect of their lives before they
were married which they remember with most interest and
enthusiasm. Before they were married the women had gone out with
their girl friends to dances, discos, cinema, shopping for clothes and
make-up and generally done all the usual ‘hobbies’ of unmarried
girls. What is interesting about their understanding of what they did
in their spare time is that they did not think of these as ‘hobbies’.
Hobbies were something active collecting stamps, playing a sport,
learning to play an instrument and these were certainly not things
which they had wanted to do. However, for their husbands they saw
‘going to the match’ or ‘going out with their mates’ as spare time
activities which their husbands were free to do. In the following
extracts the women are talking about how they used to go out with
their girl friends before they were married.

LORNA

D: Before you, when you left school. . . what did you used to do in
your spare time then?
 L: Oh, I used to go out a lot then.
D: How often was ‘a lot’?
L: Well, I used to go out Fridays, Saturday, Sunday and Monday
and probably just round to friends the other nights. I was never in
(laughs).
D: When you did go out where did you used to go?
L: Oh, dancing or pictures, you know, up town.

As well as going out with their friends the women had spent time just
being with their girl friends and enjoying themselves.

LINDA

D: Did you have any hobbies before you were married, what did
you used to do in your spare time then?
L: Well before I was married I went to night school, I think it was
twice a week – erm typing, you know [yes], I enjoyed that . . . I
really enjoyed that, it was only for a couple of hours a night. After
I'd done that I'd usually go and sit with me friend till late at night
and then go home.
D: If you went out with a girl friend, where did you go?
L: Oh, we went to the Locarno, Barbarella's, Oh, anywhere in
town, you know. We'd take, say Saturday, we'd go out, we'd go to
one place and then maybe another night we'd go to the pictures.
D: So how much roughly did you go out before you were married?
L: Er, we went out quite a lot, we went out Friday nights and
Saturday nights. One night to the pictures and Saturday night to a
disco and in the week we'd go to the pictures again, then we'd stay
in. And then I'd got me typing, I think it was only a Monday night
when I come to think of it, and if we did have an odd night we'd
stay in, washing our hair (laughs). But it all changed when I went
back with him [her boyfriend, now her husband]. I still had me
night at typing, and me day in, and the rest of the time we was
sitting in his mom's house or we'd go to the pictures.

What Linda shows in this extract is that although she went out with
her girl friend, as soon as she went back with her boyfriend, she had
to give up going out on her own and doing the things which she
enjoyed. Other women talked of the fact that once they were
‘courting’ their boy friends would not go to dances or discos with
them. They gave up both their spare-time activities and their girl
friends. Now that they were married with young children, what the
women would really have liked to have done was to go to the same
discos with their old friends. Of course, none of them was able to go
out dancing on their own because their husbands thought that they
would only want to go to dances or discos to meet other men.
However, this was not the reason why they wanted to go, it was
simply for the pleasure of enjoying something which they had loved
doing before they settled down to married life. It was clear from
talking to the women, that they would have been better off if they had
kept up their own interests when they had first started going out with
their boyfriends and not abandoned both their girl friends and the
interests, however limited they now felt that these had been.
One of the reasons why the women had given up their own spare
time pleasures was linked with the start of ‘going steady’ and ‘saving
to get married’. It is assumed that the need for a home and family
are something which only young women want and not an ambition of
their boyfriends. Men seem to have ‘gone along’ with the idea of
saving for marriage and they have been willing to stay at home
listening to records or watching television at the home of their
parents. The women have given up their own spare time activities,
on the pretext of saving money, and the only time the couple have
spent money has been when going to the cinema or going out for a
drink. However, it seems that the men had still had their ‘nightout’
with their mates or their visits to the local football matches. This
resulted in these women giving up their relationships with their girl
friends and setting the pattern for their future, which in this case
meant loneliness and feelings of resignation.

Being married and being a mother

D: Is being married or being a mother as you expected it would

be?

LINDA
L: (Long pause) No, not really, it's hard (laughs).
D: How did you expect it would be?
L: I thought it would be easy and be fun, but it's not, no.

LORNA

L: It's harder than I thought it would be. Before when I went to

work, it was easy. I come home and I could go out dancing on a
night, and I'd never be tired, but now you get up in the morning,
you do your housework, by the time six o'clock you're sitting on the
settee, half asleep. I mean, he'll come home and if he said, ‘Come
on, we'll go dancing,’ I don't think I could, I feel that tired.
D: So how did you expect it would be?
L: I don't know, I think I was sort of rushed into it and I didn't really
think about it, ‘cos I was four months pregnant before we got
married and his mother wanted to rush. I didn't want to get
married, I wanted to get married after she was born. Well, he didn't
say nothing, he just stood there and his mother wanted us to get
married and er, I didn't want to get married.

BETTY

D: So is your life how you expected it would be with the children

and . . .
B: I s'pose it is really ‘cause I never really thought about it much,
about the children. I just thought I'd just carry on going to work and
that really.
D: Before you had the children how had you thought things would
be?
B: Well I just thought it would be just like it was when I was single
but I'd be married so I could please myself what I done y'know.
We'd just sort of go on holiday together and that and things like
that. Do just more or less what I wanted to do instead of having to
get home at a certain time every night. [mm] I never really thought
about having children and having to look after them and stop going
to work. It never occurred to me (laughs).
All these accounts tell how the whole experience of ‘being married’
and ‘being a mother’, had come as a surprise to the women. They
had been shocked to find how hard it was, particularly the whole
business of childcare which they had found very difficult, especially
caring for young babies. For some of them it had been an
experience which had been forced upon them as they had been
expecting their babies when they had married so they had not even
had time to adjust to being married and being responsible for their
husbands and homes. However, I do not want to create the
impression that the young women I talked to were all desperately
unhappy or regretting their marriage, for this was definitely not the
case. Their feelings about everything were contradictory, for often
the aspects of their lives which they found most enjoyable and gave
them the most pleasure were at the same time the very things which
restricted them. This was particularly the case when they talked
about their children. This was often the most enjoyable aspect of
their lives, but at the same time it was the reason why they could not
go out to work or were not free to go out at night. However, they did
see looking after their children as being very different from doing
housework and it was certainly not boring even when it was hard
work. What was clear when I was talking to the women was that they
had thought of ‘getting married’ but not of ‘being married’ and the
reality of their situation was now not as pleasant as they had thought
it would be. Perhaps Anne sums up how many of the women felt
about their lives when she says, ‘No boring, just (...) I feel as though
there should be something else.’

What about the future?

Perhaps the saddest part of the study which I made was the way that
the women thought about their own futures. They were, after all, very
young women and their lives stretched before them for many years.
However, they could not see the possibility of any change in their
situation, nor, indeed, did they think of themselves at all. Their own
futures had been lost in their thinking about their children's futures.
They worried about their children growing up and being happy
without really considering their own happiness in the meantime. It
was as if their own lives would be held in limbo until their babies
were married in twenty years time! The following comments were
typical:

Pat: Well all I really think about is Michelle growing up and what
she'll be like and what she'll be doing. But I don't really think about
myself.
Lorna: Well the only thing I worry about is getting old, just the one
thing and worry about these growing up. You know, in this kind of
world. Especially her, I mean, I sort of, I had a nice boyfriend,
fiance, I mean, she could come up to anything couldn't she?

These women were themselves only nineteen and twenty, yet they
thought about their children being married instead of the interim
years for themselves. Other women suggested that they might have
more babies even though they had told me that they were waiting for
their children to go to school so that they could think about getting
part-time work. What was clear, was that they realised that they had
achieved their ambition to be married and ‘settled down’ and what
they had to do was to come to terms with it. As Lorna, who had only
been married for six months, said, ‘Well, I suppose you get used to it
in time, I suppose I will.’
I said at the beginning of this chapter that I did not want to present
a depressing picture of marriage to young girls who see their future
as being happily married with their own children. There is nothing
wrong with those ideas as long as the romance of the whole situation
does not blot out the reality which may result. If the words which the
women spoke to me have had any impact in this chapter, I would like
to think that they might make young girls determined not to follow
exactly in the footsteps of the women I talked to. As I have tried to
show, their greatest regrets had not been getting married and having
their children, but giving up their own individuality much earlier in
their relationships with their boyfriends. They had sacrificed their
ideas or ambitions for jobs, their hobbies and their girl friends and
after they had left work they had lost their companions from their
jobs as well. It is important that girls should see themselves having
the ‘right’ to good jobs and the opportunities to enjoy themselves as
they wish and not to feel that as soon as they meet their boyfriends,
they have to give up everything and conform to different standards
once they start ‘going steady’. If the women whom I talked to had
retained their girl friends and still gone out with them before they
married it would have been easier for them to continue to go out with
them after they had married and become mothers. As I have said
earlier, it was not that the women were unhappy or regretted getting
married but rather that they felt that there should be ‘something else’
in their lives.
7 Just like a Jackie story
Angela McRobbie
Illustrated by Rhonda Wilson

For several years now I have been writing and researching on

aspects of girls’ lives; this article is taken from some work I did in
1977, and at present I am investigating girls’ work: hairdressing,
boutique work and office jobs.

It would be difficult to imagine an adolescent without magazines like

Jackie. They are so much a part of the clutter of our everyday lives
we barely notice them. On the newstands, under the school desk or
in the privacy of the bedroom, their existence seems so natural that
we take them for granted. Like ‘Top of the Pops’, Jackie is something
of a national institution, a family affair. So familiar are we with its
codes that we can, perhaps jokingly, make sense of our experiences
in its terms. It sets the framework within which a whole range of
adolescent themes and issues are dealt with. And the regularity of its
appearance and its advice over the years means that few of us are
likely to have been totally unaffected by it. Its romances become our
romances, the feelings it portrays, our feelings, its jealousies, ours.
Without ever having purchased a copy, the chances are that most
people could roughly describe its format, its front cover. And
because mums and dads, brothers and sisters, regularly flick
through its pages in their spare moments, it has an actual readership
which far outstrips its already huge sales figures (approximately
600,000 weekly). This very familiarity lends it a cosiness, a kind of
reliability. It's both modern (the models young and fashionable, the
colours bright, the design ‘trendy’), and unchanging. In fact, since it
first appeared in the early 1960s, its layout and contents have
remained almost the same. (Girl on cover, two picture stories,
problem page, fashion/beauty feature and pop pin up.) The repetition
of this pattern, year in, year out, means that the magazine comes to
serve as a kind of symbolic landmark against which quite literally
generations of girls can chart their adolescent biographies. Jackie's
success over the last sixteen years is bound up with the continuing
attraction which its formula has for eleven- to fourteen-year-old girls.
Any changes it makes are strictly minor and are only evident on
close analysis of the magazine over a considerable span such
popularity and of time. What then is this image which provokes such
popularity and loyalty amongst teenage girls, black middle-class?
Photograph by
Pam Bloor

In fact, everything about Jackie is designed to capture the

interests of its desired readership. Jackie is a modern (and therefore
young) girl's name. It's short, snappy, and up to date, and so offers a
point of immediate identification to its potential readers. Each week's
cover displays this week's Jackie smiling out of the picture towards
the passing girl, the reader. And in so far as the model looks smart
(never sloppy), pretty (never plain), and cute (never aggressive), she
also sets the limits to which the reader should aspire in terms of
appearance. Yet hidden behind her smile is another sign, one of
complicity about who the real focus of attention is. Along with the
listed contents (’Will You Be His Dream Girl?’), the coyness and
flirtiness of the model's expression leaves the reader in no doubt.
The glance is primarily aimed at the handsome ‘guy’ who is just
about to appear round the corner, just about to get off the next bus.
In this way the cover graphically defines both its market and the
consuming passions which seemingly characterise such a market.

From cover to cover, Jackie presents its readers with topics,

subjects and sets of meanings. But because these meanings are so
commonplace, because we, the readers are so used, already, to
equating adolescence with problems, romance, and a whole string of
insecurities, we lose track of them as constructs and as only one of a
possible range of meanings. Jackie is so definitive about its dealing
with youth and femininity, it's so authoritative (in the friendliest way),
it implies ultimately that it's all ‘sewn up’, all dealt with here. This
makes it difficult for readers to imagine alternatives.
 What I want to suggest is that although the magazine does
respond to the real needs, feelings and experiences of girls, the
meanings it makes available to them, and the means by which these
experiences are to be made sense of, are both limited and limiting.
Ostensibly, Jackie, along with the rest of the pop media, aims to
entertain, to give pleasure. With magazines, this involves looking
and reading, while with music obviously the emphasis is first on
listening and then also on looking. But in both cases these actions
are not as simple as they seem. They also imply ways of looking,
ways of listening. Jackie teaches us how to look in both senses. How
to find an attractive self-image is part and parcel of learning how to
look at Jackie and its view of the world, uncritically. In other words,
Jackie presents its readers with relatively closed sets of meanings.
My argument will not, however, be that the entire pop media is
therefore a bad thing, something ultimately to be done away with.
Quite the opposite. Light reading and exciting listening are vital parts
of our social lives, I want to suggest here that these could be made
more fulfilling, more exciting. Altogether they could embrace wider
meanings – as they stand right now, the commercial pop media
encourages girls to value themselves only in so far as they are
valued by boys. Readers and listeners alike are rarely encouraged to
attach any importance to relationships and friendships which are not
romances. Apparently devoted to leisure and fun, their idea of fun,
and especially Jackie's, is almost wholly restricted to the neurotic
search for a ‘fella’. It is in these limited self-images, and the narrow
possibilities they present, that the brunt of my critique lies.
Yet such a critique does not imply that these messages are
swallowed whole. Although girls can ‘live the Jackie dream’, this
does not necessarily mean they apply its wisdoms to their everyday
lives in a mechanical fashion. Or, to put it another way, there is an
unambiguous space between what Jackie describes and prescribes,
and what happens in practice. Linked to this is the idea that Jackie
cannot be held solely responsible for the narrow and restricted lives
many girls are forced to lead. If girls end up in boring and
unsatisfying jobs, and if, as an escape they return to the home, to
housework and child-rearing which turns out to be even more
unsatisfying (see Dorothy Hobson's chapter), this is because a
whole range of factors militate against them having any alternative,
against them having any confidence that they could themselves play
an active role in making things better. Ultimately the girl's ‘career’ at
home and in the workplace is determined by her social class, her sex
and her race. All of these possess a great deal more power than
Jackie magazine, yet it is only when we see the way in which they
are played out, not alone, but alongside a whole range of institutions
in the school, in the family, in leisure, and therefore also in Jackie
that we can begin to make sense of the way in which, in every
aspect of their social lives, women and girls are treated as inferior,
incapable of exercising control over their own lives. The confidence
that Jackie encourages stretches little further than that needed to
smile at the local heart-throb.
It's always difficult to be precise about the effect the media has.
Their power inevitably works insidiously, obliquely. The social
scientists who try to measure the effect of ‘Starsky and Hutch’ by
placing children in front of the screen in laboratories fully equipped
with sophisticated monitoring devices, and then continue over some
period of time to observe their behaviour for its violence and
aggression levels’, impose a rigidity which simply is not applicable in
terms of how people actually watch television or read magazines.
They also fail to recognise that programmes like ‘Starsky and Hutch’
don't operate in a vacuum. Almost every other aspect of social life
encourages little boys to be (within certain limits) violent, indeed a
whole battery of ‘professionals’ are more worried if they don't show
sufficient aggression.
Girls don't simply read the advice on the Cathy and Claire page
one day and apply it the next. Like watching television, reading
magazines is rarely an absolutely private affair. Both activities are
carried out at least against the background noise of social situations.
The television may be on in the living room while each member of
the family is engaged in a different activity, none of which involves
sitting ‘glue eyed’. Likewise, the thirteen-year-old girl can have one
eye on the television and the other on Jackie, at the same time as
she is trying to finish her homework before her friend calls round to
accompany her to the youth club.
 The density and complexity of the social fabrics within which a
magazine like Jackie is read is nicely summarised in the following
incident. The ‘powder room’ in the Bullring Shopping Centre in
Birmingham is a well-known place for girls who are ‘wagging off
school to while away the afternoon. One day I came across a group
of Asian girls dressed in a combination of satin trousers and school
uniform, engrossed in a typical Jackie quiz. They each had a copy of
the magazine, one girl was playing the role of quiz-mistress asking
the questions round the group and keeping track of the marks:
‘When he arrives late, in his sports car, to pick you up for a special
date do you: (a) smile sweetly as though nothing had happened? (b)
Sulk until he begs your forgiveness? (c) Make it clear you're not a
girl who likes to be kept waiting?’ and so on. . . . Every question and
answer was greeted with gales of laughter and giggling. As a game,
their enjoyment was indisputable, but it seems unlikely that the
situation outlined bore very much relation to the romantic experience
of the participants, or indeed that of any thirteen-year-old girls.
Not only can magazines like Jackie be experienced in ways which
have little to do with the everyday lives of their readers, (as pure
fantasy), they can also be used in ways which seem to run directly
counter to their intended usage. For example, as lunch-time reading,
Jackie is quite legitimate, but during class it becomes an expression
of boredom, a weapon against the authority of the teacher, a sign of
discontent. In the home it can signal the desire for some privacy and
in the youth club it's either a sure sign that there really is nothing
else to do, or else it's a plea once again for autonomy from the
interventions of youth leaders anxious to engage the girls in a game
of basketball.
It is only by contextualising Jackie in this way that we can begin to
make sense of it as a communication process. It is also important to
view it in relation to all the other women's magazines which are
equally familiar parts of our ‘social furniture’. From the age of five
onwards, girls are personified in a range of magazines. These chart
their readers’ lives chronologically and with such exactness they
seem all the more natural. From Mandy and Bunty to Jackie, 19,
Honey and Cosmopolitan, from Woman and Woman's Own to Good
Housekeeping, the ‘real’ career for a woman is spelt out in such a
way as to leave the reader in little doubt. After all, there are no male
equivalents. For their light reading, men instead have hobby
magazines – from fishing and car maintenance to pornography. The
nearest any of these come to the home is Do-It-Yourself, and that's a
strictly weekend affair.
Instead of having hobbies, instead of going fishing, learning to play
the guitar, or even learning to swim or play tennis, the girl is
encouraged to load all her eggs in the basket of romance and hope it
pays off.

It must be clear by now that the one concept which holds Jackie
together, which gives it coherence, is romance. This finds its fullest
expression in the picture stories and in the problems. But it is also
there in the fashion, beauty, and pop features – as the very reason it
is worth dressing up or making up. In short it represents the prime
sensibility which runs right through the magazine, the very
framework through which all emotions are channelled. And linked to
this is the idea that the only attachments worth forming are those
with potential steadies and with future husbands. Closeness or
commitment of any other kind doesn't find a place in the Jackie
world. What's more, immersion in this culture of romance is
synonymous with a blocking out of the real world and a retreat into
the sphere of the senses, to the red roses, set smiles and secret
signs of classic ‘love’. Sweet Nothings!
Nowhere is this rigid adherence to the pattern of traditional true
love more clearly expressed than in the picture stories. Rarely are
there more than two characters and they tend to look quite different
from the teenage girls who buy Jackie. They are older, glamorous
and seem strangely old-fashioned. The girls wear heavy 1960s eye
make-up, even mini-skirts, and the boys often look like James Bond
figures! The usual explanation offered for this is that the artists who
do the drawing are contracted as cheap labour from Southern Spain,
they are sent the blocks with the story outline and they simply have
to provide the visuals. The assumption then is that the figures are
bound to look a little out-of-date. Not only is this assumption
chauvinistic, it also fails to explain why a magazine purportedly for
young teenagers should describe the emotions and passions of
young adults who look ten years older than the readers. Why not,
after all, have out-of-date schoolgirls? The answer to this is quite
simply that, officially, thirteen-year-old girls, especially in school
uniform, are not meant to engage in such passion, are not meant to
display such maturity of emotion. By focusing on young people who
look as though they left school some time ago, the Jackie editors are
insuring themselves against criticism from the establishment (from
Mrs Mary Whitehouse) that they may be leading young girls astray!
The typical plot follows a predictable path. A relationship is
formed, threatened and then either consolidated or else tragically
dissolved. As the story proceeds to a climax so the visuals rise to the
occasion and express, with graphic detail, the moment when,
arriving late at the party, the timid heroine finds him in the arms of
her untrustworthy best friend; or else when she, learning of his
infidelity, runs out in front of a passing car. This central image is
larger and commands more space than all the other pictures around
it. It spills out over its frame like a dramatic ‘still’ from a film clip and
proclaims its horrible significance, the moment all girls dread. The
stuffiness and claustrophobia of this seemingly pleasurable state
(love) cannot be emphasised enough; it puts the girl in the position of
relentless edginess, she's either waiting anxiously for him to appear
or else nervously anticipating the day he might disappear. The entire
social world that she inhabits is reduced to the sum of the romantic
possibilities it throws up. Offices, car-parks, dentists’ waiting rooms,
supermarkets, and hospitals; all of these are stripped of their normal
social functions and become instead surrogate marriage bureaux.
While some stories seem to be set in London, the majority provoke
a sense of anonymity by giving no indication of locale. The
characters speak a hip kind of language with no accent or regional
inflection, and they have a slightly displaced quality about them.
They have all left school, but work hovers invisibly in the background
as a necessary time-filler between one evening and the next (or, at
best, another potential breeding ground for romance). Recognisable
social backgrounds are rare – the small town, equated with
boredom, is signalled through the symbols of coffee bar and
motorbike – the country is somewhere to escape from a broken
romance, and the city is where ‘it all happens’. But it's a city
strangely bereft of population; there are no children, no old people,
no mums and dads, no foreigners and no black teenagers. It's a
world inhabited by rootless, classless, white young people whose
sole objective in life seems to be the search for the right partner. For
girls this means fighting to get him, fighting to keep him, and
simultaneously trying to have some fun!
No story ever ends with two girls alone together enjoying
themselves. A happy ending means a happy couple, a sad one, a
single girl. Having eliminated the possibility of strong supportive
relations between girls, between people of different ages, sexes, and
colour, pure unadulterated ‘love’ is once again elevated to the dizzy
heights. More seriously, romance displaces and makes irrelevant
sexuality and the very real problems it poses for girls. The
implication is that boys’ demands and girls’ desires rarely go beyond
the stage of the clinch. Male sexual aggression and exploitation are
magically removed and boys themselves undergo a strange
metamorphosis – they become as loving and caring as the girls (well
almost – because they can always succumb to the temptation of the
irresistible untrustworthy best friend). Although they may reveal more
softness and emotion than we might expect, this does not imply a
blurring of sex roles. While boys can be wild, exciting, zany – whilst
they can even be footballers or pop stars girls simply are – loving,
romantic, or else jealous, possessive, frightened. Ultimately, what
these stories have in common is a sense of deep-rooted fear – of
losing or else of never finding your ‘guy’.
It is precisely these fears which are explored and ‘treated’ in the
problem page. If the picture stories deal with the fantastic and the
melodramatic, then the problem page concerns itself with the
opposite. In stark contrast with the bright and thus ‘happy’ colours of
the rest of the magazine, the problem page is suitably set out in
gloomy black and white, the colours of ‘realism’. The Cathy and
Claire page addresses itself to the day-to-day life of the readers. The
intimacy of this relationship is expressed in the use of their first
names. Cathy and Claire sound like sympathetic elder sisters rather
than professional counsellors. (Older women's magazines usually
include the full name of the agony columnist, thus lending her an air
of authority and professionalism.)
The central point I want to make, here is that although Cathy and
Claire do undoubtedly respond to their readers’ problems, to the
whole battery of questions about best friends, boyfriends, pocket
money and housework, they don't do so in purely ‘clinical’ terms.
Advice is not like medicine, it deals with social relations rather than
individual symptoms. This means that, once again, what girls are
advised to do corresponds to looking at the world and the women's
role in a certain way. And, as far as Jackie is concerned this involves
sticking strictly to the status quo. Maybe it's easiest to demonstrate
this by showing what the Cathy and Claire page never does. For
example if a girl has a problem with an unreliable ‘fella’, the advice is
invariably to let him go – only because she's bound to find a more
suitable partner in the near future. (Not because it may be more fun
to be single.) Unconventional behaviour is never encouraged and
girls whose friends have a taste for ‘freaky’ clothes are advised to
ditch them. Most vividly, this absence of positive advice is expressed
in the letter from a girl whose problem was simple. She'd been
invited to a wedding, was supposed to take a partner and didn't have
one readily available.
It would undoubtedly be beyond the possibilities of the Jackie
framework to suggest braving it out and going alone, even more
unlikely would be the idea of bringing a girlfriend. Instead, the girl in
question is advised to chat up some available boy: ‘You could say
something like, “I've been invited to this wedding and I've got to take
a partner and I just don't know who to ask”. Then you could look at
him and smile sweetly.’
It could be argued that there is a real strand of ‘common sense’ in
this reply. Social etiquette as it is makes it very difficult for people
who are not in steady units to take part in everyday leisure.
‘Spinsters’ (a degrading term by any standards) and widows, are well
acquainted with this problem; often they simply don't get invited to
social occasions. They feel left out, a burden; other women feel
obliged to get their husbands to offer to dance with them. Quite
simply, in their failure they represent a threat. The worst that could
happen. No wonder the girl in question is looking for advice. Her
choices are few – the stigma of failure by going alone, the loneliness
of not going and staying at home, or else the possibility of
compromise, a friendly encounter with a suitable boy and the
minimum risk of humiliation. If that's how things are then maybe
Cathy and Claire take the most reasonable line. But the point is that
if it's so bad then maybe things should change – and changing social
customs and practices may not necessarily be any more painful than
putting up with them. What if the boy declines, doesn't like weddings
or already has a steady girlfriend in the next town? One thing is
clear, boys aren't expected to suffer in the same way – going to a
wedding alone is no indelible sign of stigma to them. Likewise,
bachelors, far from being felt sorry for, are generally seen as
possessing some kind of mystique – having avoided being ‘caught’
by a woman, they represent a challenge, and as such, at a wedding,
have a choice of willing dance partners.
Once again we are faced here with the contradiction between
Jackie's ostensible commitment to fun and pleasure and the pain
and suffering which seems to be so much part of the girl's (and
woman's) life. It is as though, by way of compensation, we (the
readers) have instead a series of glorious moments which make up
for what goes in between. The Jackie world equates pure pleasure
with those transitory moments (the clinch – and then he kissed me)
so that the girl's life, present and future, is made sense of in terms of
such scenes, the first kiss, the proposal, the wedding day, the birth of
the first child, and by this time we are in the territory of Woman's
Own and have successfully and smoothly negotiated the passage
from adolescence to adulthood. As far as Jackie is concerned the
emphasis on such moments solves some, but not all, problems.
There is still the fundamental contradiction between momentary
thrills and the fact that after all love is meant to last forever. The
effect of this tension is to increase the fears and insecurities of the
girl, hence the continual uncertainty which taints even the most
passionate of moments: ‘Is this really forever?’ ‘Will this really last?’
‘How can I know that he means it?’ and so on. Moreover, it could be
argued that in channelling all pleasure into these long-awaited
moments, Jackie is performing a highly conservative function. It both
deflects interest away from the less exciting often boring and
exploitative hours, weeks, even years, that go in between, and
simultaneously devalues any other pleasures which do not promise
undying commitment, marriage and security.
What this does mean, for certain, is that the women's sphere is
unambiguously that of the emotions – they are equated with her life's
project and as such she is expected to throw herself into them with
complete abandon and commitment. The possibility of enjoying
oneself out there in the real world or of struggling to make it more
enjoyable; the possibility of working with men and women in a
satisfying way and one which does not always depend on romance
for its thrills; – all of this is ruled out. These are terms in which Jackie
strictly does not trade.
Possibly the only hobbies which are deemed truly suitable for
Jackie readers are fashion and beauty. It is in these pursuits that
their energies not expended on the actual pursuit of boys can be
legitimately expressed. But even as hobbies, these interests display
a strangely coercive edge. The thought of what happens if you don't
wash your hair, shave under your arms, use deodorant, polish your
nails and so on is so unspeakably unpleasant that the enjoyment
normally equated with spare-time activities becomes blurred. In other
words, fashion and beauty involve a set of routines which have more
in common with housework than with playing tennis. They are
feminine chores from which men and boys are more or less exempt.
They depend on planning and forethought, they are time-consuming
and often seem distinctly more like work than leisure. Although men
and boys have become increasingly fashion-conscious in the last
few years they are not expected to place such importance on their
daily beauty rituals, the day-to-day ‘reproduction’ of their looks.
Two things complicate Jackie's encouragement of these ‘hobbies’.
First, their readers are not earning a salary and therefore can't
possibly afford to keep up with high fashion, or even buy a new
mascara every other week. This means that Jackie must introduce
its readers into the world of feminine consumption, simultaneously
recognising the narrowness of their budget. Obviously there's no
possibility of doing without make-up, without new clothes, so the
answer is chainstore fashion and Woolworth's beauty! Pocket money
and birthday money are to be channelled into these outlets rather
than on records, books or towards a new sound system; indeed, girls
are explicitly advised to borrow records from boyfriends allowing all
their spare cash to be focused on feminine products. The second
problem which confronts the Jackie team in relation to these
products is their inherent ‘puritanism’, that is, the extent to which
they associate the use of make-up and the wearing of ‘flashy’ clothes
with immorality, with ‘loose’ sexual behaviour. The question then is to
encourage the use of make-up, but not its over-use. And here
discretion is the name of the game. The beauty features are littered
with phrases like ‘a touch of, ‘a hint of, ‘a trace of, ‘a slight glow of
and so on. Instead of transforming girls into sexual goddesses like
those who adorn the covers of Cosmopolitan, the aim is to gently
improve on (’draw attention to your best features’), and emphasise
the naturalness of young looks. These routines and beauty
schedules are presented as necessary stages in securing a romantic
future – even finding a job depends on them. The objective is to
adopt a strategy which involves convincing the world, through the
subtle use of makeup, that the reader is indeed a natural beauty.
This is because men and boys, fathers, husbands, and employers,
are united in their dislike of obviously artificial aids, they too prefer to
think of their wives, daughters, girl-friends and employees as
naturally ‘lovely’. ‘Most boyfriends (there are few exceptions) hate
loads of make-up, they think it goes with a loud, brassy personality
and are usually frightened off by a painted face. Ask the majority and
they'll say they prefer natural looks and subtle make-up – so that's
the way it has to be.’
This quote is the clearest expression of how the readers are
taught to capitulate entirely to male-defined preferences. Beauty
care is so closely linked to the general care of the body (no smoking
and plenty of sleep) that girls are encouraged to equate relentless
beauty ‘work’ with simply learning to look after themselves. Beauty
becomes then more relevant as education than that which they
receive in the school. It is like a vicious circle. First, they are pushed
into prioritising marriage as a career – then informed that to ensure
that this goes smoothly they must employ a whole battery of
techniques, skills and ploys. Jackie fits into this as a friendly kind of
text-book, a manual which works on the assumption that there are
no real alternatives to this prescribed goal.
What's more, by doing her own washing, laundering, repairing, the
girl is not only shifting some of the burden of household labour from
her mother, but she is also introducing herself gradually into the
sphere of what we call ‘domestic labour’, that work which is carried
out day in, day out by women, but which is usually invisible, ‘natural’.
Similarly, the Jackie emphasis on the regularity with which these
beauty labours must be carried out is relentless. Just as the mother
must make sure that meals are ready on the table every day, so
must the girl always have a clean pair of tights, a freshly laundered
skirt and well-manicured finger nails. Like housework, the chores are
endless, but Jackie makes it palatable by setting it within the context
of fun and pleasure: ‘If you do have a problem with your hair, find out
what it is and do something about it right away’ or, ‘When you're all
alone you can have a great time making yourself up . . . trying out
different hair styles and seeing what suits you best.’
Beautification is, then, the ideal ‘hobby’ for a girl. It relates both to
the notion of securing a boyfriend and in its repetition it prefigures
the housework which is the eventual outcome of love, romance and
boyfriends.
The adolescent girl truly is allowed no time off from her feminine
work. Time not taken up with the active pursuit of her goal is to be
invested in the maintenance and re-upholstery of the self. Only such
commitment guarantees the desired effects – the expected rewards.
 In contrast to the all-embracing world of beauty care, fashion in
Jackie is a strictly secondary affair. This is partly because thirteen-
year-old girls are normally still dependent on parents for major items
of clothing. The weekly fashion feature displays clothes that can be
bought in well known chain-stores, even supermarkets. The reader is
encouraged to plan her wardrobe according to her small budget, but
this does not include making use of jumble sales or organising
swaps with friends. Ideally, according to Jackie, the girl should
possess pretty daytime clothes and something slightly more ‘exotic’
for special occasions. Quite often clothes have a symbolic
significance attached to them – they're seen as objects bound to
catch his attention and are remembered in this way. Thus, in
recalling past ‘happiness’, the girl in question will frequently describe
what she was wearing that night.
Fashion is never way-out, outlandish or freaky, it is never
something created by any one, individual girl or even by a group of
girls. Instead, it is a matter in blending in well with the background,
looking nice without interrupting everyday life and ‘sparkling’ only in
the evening. The idea that some girls could honestly have little or no
interest in clothes is unimaginable, even more unlikely the possibility
that girls could enjoy fashion without in any sense directing this
interest at boys.
The problem in discussing fashion like this, however, is that it is
difficult to avoid sounding goody-goody, anti-fashion, anti-fun, and
anti-femininity. There are a number of possible ways of trying to
overcome this difficulty. First, it can be shown that there is little fun in
simply following Jackie fashion blindly and that looking conventional
can be synonymous with being conventional, not always the most
desirable self-image for young people. Second, that anyway the
Jackie promises are hollow, the most beautiful of dresses doesn't
guarantee that its wearer will indeed be most popular, most sought-
after and so on. And third, that Jackie clothes are quite often
obstacles to fun. Clean, pretty, fragile clothes restrict their wearers’
freedom, and having fun can mean getting dirty, looking untidy and
disregarding such details as perfectly styled hair, clean nails and
carefully applied mascara.
 However, the most trenchant criticism that can be held against
Jackie with regard to style is the way in which girls are denied any
choice in the self-images created through style. Neither
experimentation nor originality is encouraged. Again and again the
readers are referred back to the men and boys whose approval is so
desperately sought.
All of these points raise the question of the meaning of style and
fashion. Historically women's clothes and fashion have been
designed by men so, not surprisingly, they tend to reflect male ideas
about how women should look, act, and be. Altogether the emphasis
has been on transforming women into objects rather than allowing
them to be normal active human beings. Stiletto heels, for example,
make walking, never mind running, a feat in itself; but more than this,
symbolically they represent women's dependent fragile status. They
summon up all sort of ideas about male chivalry, female bondage;
they have an immediate and unambiguous resonance as sexual
signs.
As a result, it would be difficult to imagine feminists adopting such
a style, but just because we reject such oppressive images doesn't
mean we all choose our footwear in Clarkes. If, as a sociologist
claimed recently, ‘we speak through our clothes’, then it is almost
certain that our choice of clothes will make some kind of public
statements about the way we see our own role and the way we want
to challenge traditional conceptions of femininity. Similarly, the super-
sophisticated elegant shop assistant is saying through her clothes
that she's happy (for the moment) to go along with the status quo,
even though her feet are killing her, and the punk girl in her
parodying of what nice girls should look like, in her symbolic
undermining of femininity, is also saying something about male-
defined style. As Poly Styrene put it in 1976, ‘O Bondage Up Yours’;
not exactly the sort of thing girls are supposed to say, and it's
interesting that to date Jackie has hardly commented on the
existence of punk as a popular style and subculture. Instead, the
magazine settles for mainstream, chain-store style. This is presented
to the readers as what style is about and, needless to say, the
fashion and dress of Asian and Afro-Caribbean girls is treated as
though it doesn't exist. White style is style and the elaborate outfits
of young immigrant girls goes unnoticed.
The astonishing thing about the way pop music is presented in
Jackie is that the music is silenced and in its place the reader is
offered the ‘star’. As a kind of necessary by-product, the music
simply provides the rationale which grants the star his place inside
the pages of Jackie, but once there it is quickly forgotten. As the
‘creative energy’, even the ‘genius’ behind the ‘hit single’ record or
latest album, the emphasis is on him and, of course, on his
masculinity. Although female stars are mentioned in passing, the pin-
ups are without exception male. The enjoyment which music
provides girls with, particularly for dancing, is dismissed out of hand
as unworthy of comment. Pop music is, then, pinups, the likes and
dislikes, the latest news from the star himself. Once again the
emphasis is on the visuals and the pop features carry remarkably
little writing apart from a range of ‘snippets’ (for example, ‘Hot
Gossip’ where the readers are told about Rod's new car, Abba's
planned film, or Kate Bush's latest release, new house, boyfriend,
etc.). But these pieces of information would be of little meaning
without the accompanying photograph, the purpose of which is to
print indelibly in the minds of the readers a series of images, faces,
most of which are understood primarily in terms of attractiveness,
beauty or ‘good looks’. As far as male pin-ups are concerned, their
main role is symbolic. Designed quite literally to be pinned up, the
girl is implicitly positioned as looker, viewer, admirer, and in so far as
the poster is normally placed on the bedroom wall, above the girl's
bed, it looks forward to the day when the girl can translate her
fantasies into reality, and sleep with the boy who bears an uncanny
resemblance to . . . Bob Geldof, Paul McCartney, ... In this instance,
staring dreamily up at the boy/poster, she is passive and waiting.
Just as she waits to be asked to dance by a boy; just as she waits to
be asked out on a date; and later waits to be proposed to; so she
looks up at the picture with passive longing. This kind of image is
one we are so familiar with right across the popular media. A recent
cinema advert for a certain kind of perfume shows a teenage girl
dozing off to sleep. In her dreams she is at the disco. Suddenly the
singer, microphone in hands, leaves the stage, crosses the room and
picks her out from the swaying mass of dancing girls; the perfume
has done its work, and the other girls stare enviously.
But the pop star, to be comprehensible in terms of romance, must
be more than just a handsome object, just as real-life boys should be
more than just a pretty face. He has to be personalised, given a
personality and so the way he is presented is in terms of his
friendliness, his cute cheekiness or his boy-next-door-like qualities.
All of which serves to make him more recognisable, more real as the
desired object in the girl's romantic landscape. He is shown relaxing
at home with his mum and dad (’pop stars are not all rebels, drug-
takers, and drop-outs, in fact they're not so different from you or I’),
even on holiday with his wife (’what's more, pop stars can even be
good husbands, being in the rock world doesn't necessarily mean
having a different girl every night’). In short, when they are
personalised in this way their images serve to respectabilise the pop
world and thus make it more palatable for Jackie readers who, it is
assumed, are conventional, ordinary, and adhere to conservative
values. Basically, the stars are made to look like ‘nice boys’. I'm not
suggesting here that the world of male rock stars with their drugs,
groupies, and fast cars, present an unconventional alternative and
therefore an improvement on traditional stay-at-home values.
Ultimately there isn't much to choose between them, in each case
the girl or woman is dependent, oppressed and exploited, possibly
only marginally more as groupie than as wife, mother, or adoring fan.
The best way, once again, of clarifying this point is to spell out in
more detail what Jackie pop features don't say, don't include, don't
consider. First of all, they concentrate on mainstream show-biz pop
music, they are only interested in commercial pop and rarely show
pictures of new wave or more experimental bands. The assumption
being that girls are inherently less adventurous than boys and that
this is reflected in their musical taste. Second, they carry no reviews
of pop records or LPs. This means that the girl is encouraged only to
like it or dislike it. She is provided with no idea that music can carry
different meanings, that it can be created with highly complex
instruments, that it can represent new departures or that it can
simply follow familiar well-tested formulae. Nor is she involved in a
discussion about how music can express different emotions, how it
can call to mind with astonishing accuracy past situations, ‘forgotten
moments’. Instead, it simply is, and as long as girls equate pop only
with the latest single by Abba then Jackie has nothing to worry
about. The pop industry (like the fashion and cosmetic industry) have
their sales guaranteed, no disruptive values are being expressed
and girls are still, for the moment, happy to go along with the status
quo.
In a similar vein, though perhaps by this stage not surprisingly,
girls are provided with no information about how to set up a band,
nor are they encouraged to learn to play an instrument. Genius of
the type represented by the pin-ups, is, it seems, something that one
is born with and something that girls seem to be born without. The
idea of learning and working is ignored and the old rags-to-riches
story takes its place. What Jackie reader doesn't know that David
Essex used to be a London barrow boy, or that Sting of The Police
used to be a teacher? Linked to this is the idea that the only
conceivable motive for playing in a band is to become rich and
famous, just like Rod Stewart. Playing for pleasure, not profits, is yet
again outside the Jackie scheme of things.

What then can be said about Jackie? The ferocity of my critique, I

must admit, has increased in the course of writing this article. But
there seems little point to conclude by merely cataloguing its sins.
Jackie will continue to attract a huge readership each week, not
because it furnishes its readers with any positive self-image, not
because it encourages them to value themselves and each other, but
because it offers its exclusive attention to an already powerless
group, to a group which attracts little public attention and which is
already, from an early age, systematically denied any real sense of
identity, creativity, or control. Jackie merely does in a friendly,
intimate way what has been quietly assumed throughout its readers’
short careers. And as long as this group can be nourished with their
weekly dose of feminine culture, nobody really need worry. Girls,
after all, tend not to pop pills, drink themselves stupid or engage in
running battles with the police on Brighton beach. Not that
encouragement to participate in such rituals would represent a step
forward, far from it. What is needed, however, is an alternative mode
of communication, one where the readers would have the power to
express their feelings, their demands, their desires. One where the
publishers and owners don't have a vested interest in maintaining
huge profit margins for themselves as well as for those industries on
which commercial magazines depend for advertising revenue. As
this book goes to press, the possibility of launching such a magazine
is currently being discussed by a group of women and girls in
London. It's aptly called Shocking Pink!
8 Resistances and responses:
the experiences of black girls in
Britain
Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar

In this chapter we seek to examine some of the problems that black

women face. The chapters in this book cover many different aspects
of young women's sexuality, but we have in one chapter to address
as many general issues as we can. Many of you may feel that this is
tokenism, but we decided that it was important to use the space to
say something positive about black women's struggles rather than be
invisible yet again.1

Afro-Asian unity

There are several reasons for writing jointly about the lives and
experiences of Asian and Afro Caribbean girls in Britain. First, most
existing literature which seeks to articulate the experience of black
girls begins from a racist standpoint, denying the autonomy of black
culture and trying instead to integrate the experience of black people
into more general discussions about life in Britain. On the other hand,
token attempts have been made within feminist writing to include
material on black girls but this serves only to add ‘cross-cultural’ spice
to predominantly ethnocentric work. By this, we mean material written
from and about the dominant culture, i.e. British culture, which
ignores the existence of other cultures in the society. We feel strongly
that there is a need for black women to write about their experience
of living in Britain, but at the same time the particularity of a black
woman's experience should be made visible not only in black
writings, but within the context of more general writings on education,
leisure, sexuality, family life and other aspects of institutional racism
which impinge directly on the lives of black women. Thus we do not
look into the black community for the answers to the problems we
face as a result of racist practices in this country, we look to the
structures and institutions which function in that racist manner.
Secondly, we would like to explain what we mean when we talk
about black girls and black women. We use the term black to refer to
the two main groups of black people in this country, namely those
people who came originally from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, many
via East Africa and those people who have their origins in Africa or
who as a result of slavery now have their immediate origins in a
number of Caribbean countries. We are aware that many differences
exist in the cultures, languages and religions not only between the
Afro/Caribbean and Asian communities, but also within these two
groups. We do not see our cultural differences as operating
antagonistically because we recognise the autonomy of our separate
cultures. By working together, we have developed a common
understanding of our oppression and from this basis we build our
solidarity. The black struggle is a political one and it is important that
we fight our oppression together.
 This is what the Organisation of Women of Asian and African
Descent have to say:2

despite the ethnic and cultural differences between these two

groups (Asian and Afro/Caribbean), we do not distinguish between
them unless it is necessary to refer specifically to one or other of
the two groups, as it will be occasionally. This is because our joint
historical experience as victims of colonialism, and our present
experience as second class citizens in a racist society have
created firm bonds between us which are more significant to us
than any differences which may exist. (Black Women in Britain
Speak Out, OWAAD, 1979)

Our basic aim in this chapter is to challenge some of the myths and
stereotypes that exist not only about black girls but about black
people generally. Given the limitations of being a token chapter, it is
difficult to cover as many areas of black girls’ experiences as we
would like. Consequently, we have touched on a few general areas,
giving some idea of the issues involved rather than anything more in
depth or detailed. Having explained the basis and importance of
Afro/Asian unity, we then look at some of the existing attitudes to
black people and through our criticisms of these approaches we
outline our perspective which places a primary importance on an
examination of racism, and the ways in which racism structures and
determines black girls’ life-experiences. We then go on to examine
some of the racist and sexist stereotypes that exist about black
women. In our final section, ‘Action and reaction’ we look at the areas
of employment and education and very briefly outline the struggles
that black women have taken on in these spheres. In our conclusion
we look at the positive growth of an autonomous black women's
movement and also critically evaluate some of the reasons for black
women's absence in the white women's movement.

Racism – our starting point

In the last few years there have been an increasing number of

individuals and organisations which have been taking a keen interest
in black youth in British society. The reasons behind this interest are
as varied as the individuals and organisations who share it.
Sociologists, journalists, social workers, teachers, community/youth
workers, police, the schools and other institutions of the state have
produced between them a vast amount of literature on black youth
and their ‘cultural conflicts’, ‘identity crises’ and ‘generational
conflicts’.
Like other literature on the black community, material on black girls
has started off from the premise that they are a problem for
themselves, for their parents and for white society, more particularly
for white teachers, social workers and the police force.
Our cultural norms and values have been seen as responsible for
bad housing, overcrowded schools and unemployment amongst other
social ills. By adopting such a perspective, white academics and
practitioners in the so-called ‘helping and caring’ professions have
shifted the blame from the nature of the society we live in on to our
religion, culture and communities.
 The following quotes from some white social workers illustrate the
above point quite clearly:3

Most of my ethnic minority clients have child-care or mental health

problems – because these are areas of conflict with our own
culture.

Particularly with the West Indians, there are problems with teenage
girls. Their culture is so different and the girls want more freedom.

I do a lot of work with adolescents – West Indians are particularly

good at being caught by the police. It has a lot to do with police
discretion, i.e. West Indian culture is to stand around the street
corner and the police book them.

We need to be more flexible in our assessments – e.g. West Indian

family discipline/marital expectations among Asian families. We
could assess the situation as being disharmonious, but it is
culturally how husbands address their wives or treat them. The
Views of Social Workers on Multi-Racial Areas, CRE, April 1977.

The problem then is us, our cultures, and the solution is seen as
resting on the degree to which we are prepared to integrate, to accept
white cultural values. By this they mean that if only Afro/Caribbean
and Asian people would behave like whites, dress like them, eat like
them, have the same family size as them, and speak like them, that is
adopt white English cultural habits, then they would find it easier to
ignore the fact that they are black and there would be no problem of
race in Britain.
For example, some more telling quotes from white social workers:

I try to get minorities to understand the different values and parts of

behaviour so that they fit in better.

They require more help with simple things like hygiene, child-care,
health, more advice on family planning, more help for the women
who are unhappy and isolated, more classes to learn English.
Some more liberal-minded workers have been forced to recognise
through the independent activities of black people that there is a
legitimate reason for resistance to integration and assimilation. As
black people, we do not need to be ‘taught’ white culture, we already
have a culture and it is the denial of our culture by white people which
is one source of the problem. These social workers, therefore, feel
that if, as whites, they understand the black community's cultures and
languages better, then they might not experience so many problems
in working with them. Further quotes to illustrate the above point:

It is a question of different scales of values – one has to let a West

Indian do things which one would not expect a white person to do –
it is a matter of understanding their culture.

I don't think we have changed our method of work although I think

we should do. One always questions the conventional approach to
ethnic groups, we try to avoid recognising publicy that they are
different. We should look at other ways of dealing with this, to study
the different cultures or take them into account.

From aiming for integration to being tolerant about ‘their cultures’ is

part of the same process of racism. White workers have to recognise
that most people in the black communities do not particularly want to
be assimilated, nor do we want to be tolerated. We have every right
to be here.
Our starting point, then, is that Britain is a racist society and it is
racism which needs to be looked at, not multi-racialism, multi-
culturalism, identity crises or other spurious notions which serve only
to evade and/or deflect from the real issues.
Furthermore, any adequate account of the situation of black girls in
Britain has to begin with the premise that their day-to-day
experiences are determined by three crucial factors – race, class and
sex/gender.
For instance, if we take the factor of race, then it has to be said that
the situation of black girls cannot be isolated from that of the rest of
the black community, as they are equally affected by bad housing
conditions, unemployment, or employment in low-paid non-unionised
sweat shops and factories, by a racist police force, by racist attacks
on the streets and in schools, and racist immigration laws.
The area of racist immigration laws has a double disadvantage for
black girls, particularly Asian girls.
On 14th November 1979 the Tory government published their white
paper proposals for revision of the immigration rules. These
proposals, which are now law, are aimed at reducing immigration of
Asian males. One of the ways in which they have attempted to do this
is by taking away the right of Asian girls who either were not born in
Britain or one of whose parents was not born here, to decide whom to
marry. For example, if an Asian girl has lived in Britain most of her
life, gone to school here and grown up here, then married a man in
India and wanted to live with him in Britain, she could not do this.
The government has taken it upon itself to decide who black
women should marry.
Below are some views on this legislation of some Asian girls who
have either lived in Britain most of their lives or who were born here.

ON IMMIGRATION
(sixteen- to eighteen-year olds)

They are making too much out of arranged marriages and using it
for their own purpose. We have to realise that. (Abida)

It's for us, the girls and our families, to work out our problems and
issues of marriage and it's not for the government to decide or to
take a stand and say ‘Oh, Asian marriages don't work out so we
won't allow them’. (Daxa)

The government doesn't really give a damn as long as there are no

more black faces; they don't really mind who does what with their
lives. (Surjit)

The main point is really to stop black immigration and nought else.
And the next thing they will say is ‘go home, we have no more use
for you’. (Daxa)

You mean to tell me that once we come here, have our homes here
and we work here and our life is here and everything else, and then
 they turn around and say ‘go back to your jungle, we don't want you
here’. (Abida)

What we are saying is that we have the right to decide where we

live, where we get married, who with and when and not have the
government tell us. (Surjit)

The girls are saying that they belong here. Britain is their home and
they have every right to be here. But why is it that we came here in
the first place and settled here?

We are here, because you were there

To understand the situation of Afro-Caribbean and Asian people in

Britain today, we have to first look at the forces and motivations
behind our migration here in the historical context of British
imperialism. What has been termed the ‘Third World’ has always
been a source of cheap labour to countries like Britain and the other
Western industrialised nations and in Britain's case this was a
relationship based on the political and economic exploitation of her
colonies. The West Indian islands and the Asian sub-continent
present a classic example of this exploitation, which benefits the
developed nation and hinders the development of the exploited
nation.
A common misconception held by a majority of British people is
that relations between themselves and the peoples of the Caribbean
or the Indian sub-continent only began when the first black
immigrants came to Britain in the late 1940s and early 1950s.4

These poor, benighted people, for reasons which the British

sometimes find it hard to bring to mind, picked themselves up out
of their villages and plantations and quite uninvited made this long,
strange and apparently unpredictable journey to the doors of British
industry – which as you know, out of the goodness of their hearts,
gave them jobs. (Stuart Hall)
 This is what the British people like to believe. But, of course,
Britain's relations with the peoples of the Caribbean and the Indian
sub-continent did not begin in the 1940s. For centuries, Britain ruled
our countries and systematically perverted their economies for her
own ends. The Indian sub-continent was used to produce the cotton,
tea, jute, and other raw materials needed by Britain for her own
industrial development. India's own textile industry was destroyed so
that Britain could export her own cotton goods both to India and to
other British colonies. Land policies destroyed many traditional
agricultural and home craft industries such as weaving and spinning
and this created widespread migration of peasants from the villages
to the cities. Tremendous hardship and suffering was imposed on the
Indian peoples as Britain continued to exploit and ignore their needs
so that her own economic requirements could be fulfilled.
Britain's material prosperity and dominance was founded in the
seventeenth century on the slave trade and the plantation system.
After the abolition of slavery, no industrial development which would
serve the needs of the people was allowed to take place in the
Caribbean. The natural resources of the Caribbean, sugar, bananas,
cocoa, bauxite, etc., were sucked out for the requirements of British
industry.
The inevitable result for the people both in the Indian sub-continent
and the Caribbean was mass poverty and unemployment while the
wealth acquired through conquest, colonisation and trade continued
to enrich the British nation.
Even after independence the situation in these less developed
countries did not improve because the economic relationship
remained the same. They were dependent on the colonial powers for
the capital required to regenerate and redevelop their economies.
There was little investment in these areas and widespread poverty
and massive unemployment led to large-scale migration to the
‘developed’ nations in search of jobs. The period of the 1950s and
1960s was one of migration to Britain. The British economy was in a
state of growth and there were a number of job vacancies which
needed to be filled particularly in the non-growth sectors of industry.
These jobs were characterised by low pay and bad working
conditions and they were the jobs which white workers refused to do.
 British people have been led to believe that we came here to take
away their jobs, their homes, to overcrowd their schools and to
‘swamp’ their culture. What is conveniently forgotten and deliberately
missed out from the teaching of British history is that we were, in fact,
invited to come here and promised a better life in a country where the
streets were apparently ‘paved with gold’. This whole idea of the
wealth and richness of Britain wasn't conjured up by us, but was
deliberately perpetuated by particular British interests to encourage
us to come to Britain and help rebuild its economy after the Second
World War. For example, in the Caribbean, direct recruitment centres
were set up by the National Health Service, by London Transport and
the British Hotels and Restaurants Association. In India, Pakistan,
and Bangladesh, managers for textile firms were sent out to recruit
workers directly for their mills in the Midlands and in Yorkshire and in
many cases they paid for the fares for workers to come here. The
case of East African Asians is slightly different. The East African
Asians were mostly small shop-owners, clerks in the government
services and bankers. Most of them had migrated from the Indian
states of Gujerat and Punjab to East Africa. A large section of them
had originally gone as bonded labourers in the 1890s. They were the
minority group which the British had brought in from India to serve as
intermediaries between themselves, the white colonialists, and the
indigenous, exploited African population. On the whole, the Indians
did the smaller jobs which the Europeans could not be bothered with.
For example, they became traders, merchants or petty officials. The
following account of how one man travelled to Africa illustrates the
situation very vividly and it also shows the hardship that thousands of
other men and women like him had to endure.

In 1932 life in India was hard and of little hope to us. Colonialism
still existed and it was because of this that I started thinking about
migrating. I knew that in the late nineteenth century the British
colonialists had trained the Indians to be soldiers and transferred
them to places like the West Indies and East Africa. Soon after that
the great migration period of India started; the peoples went to
work as labourers on the railways, or they went to work the
machinery or they started to trade. Some even went to farm the
land.
He describes the conditions on board the ship bound for Africa:

There were no decent toilet facilities on the deck so the whole

place started stinking. Those who had paid for better conditions
complained to the official, who ignored everything except delivering
this load of people to its destination. So we were spat at. We could
do nothing but whitewash the deck wherever it was not covered by
mattresses or luggage. We tried our best to keep clean but our
efforts were in vain and fever broke out. There were few doctors on
the lower deck and the other doctors were too proud or
insufficiently equipped and could do nothing. Death had broken into
the ship and was carrying away soul after soul. As soon as
someone died, the Captain called a squad who put the body in a
jute bag, weighed it down with heavy rocks, then over it went. It
was a formidable sight.

This experience of migration from the Asian sub-continent to Africa

is not dissimilar to the experience of African people during the slave
period. Africans were brutalised, beaten and degraded before being
herded together like cattle and shipped from the West African coast
to America, the West Indian islands and Latin America. The slaves
serviced the plantation economies of the American South and the
Caribbean and the loss of human life was immeasurable. After the
abolition of slavery indentured labourers from India were transported
to some parts of South America and the Caribbean and later to East
Africa to service the requirements of British capital. Black people
were treated as human cargo, their function was to secure a profit for
British capitalist enterprise. Britain developed a particular relationship
with her colonies, a relationship based on exploitation.
East African Asians came to Britain around 1966. In 1967 the Ken-
yatta Government in Kenya, who had introduced the Africanisation
policies, granted only temporary residence to those British Asians
who had not opted for Kenyan citizenship at the time of Kenyan
Independence in 1963.
The only viable alternative for the British Asians was to come to
Britain. In 1965 and 1966, when they were not subject to any
immigration control, 6,000 Asians with British citizenship came to
Britain.
 But the British government at the time (which was Labour) was
acutely aware of all those other British Asians and Africans all around
the world, whom she had used to develop her imperial colonies.
Therefore, keen to stop their mass entry into Britain, they moved very
swiftly to try and control this new source of immigration to Britain.
They did this by altering the legal rights of entry through the 1968
Immigration Act. The British Asians were redefined by this Act as
Commonwealth Citizens and since the Commonwealth citizens were
subject to the voucher system, the British Asians in Kenya would also
be liable to this procedure for entry into the United Kingdom. The only
distinction was that they would be allocated special vouchers as
distinct from work vouchers.
A voucher system was first introduced through the Commonwealth
Immigration Act of 1962. This act distinguished two kinds of citizens
of the United Kingdom and Colonies by dividing British passport-
holders, whose passport had been issued by the British government,
from those UK citizens whose passport had been, or could be, issued
by a Colonial government. The latter category were no longer free to
enter the UK to take employment unless a voucher was obtained first.
A limited number of these vouchers, which differentiated between
skilled and unskilled work, were issued to Commonwealth countries
each year, although after 1965 only 8,500 in total were available and
in that year vouchers for unskilled jobs were withdrawn completely.
This system established that immigration of heads of household
from the black Commonwealth was geared to the requirements of the
British economy. ‘It was also a system which took discrimination out
of the market place and gave it the sanction of the State. It made
racism respectable and clinical by institutionalizing it.’5
Furthermore, vouchers for Kenyan Asians were only issued to
heads of households, normally males, for themselves and certain
categories of dependants. Here the dependent status of Asian
women was made very clear. Women holding British passports had
great difficulty in proving that they were heads of households.
Widowed, divorced, deserted women and those women with British
passports whose husbands were non-British citizens came into this
group.
 The problem of sexist discriminatory immigration laws is still
continuing and further restrictions are being placed on black women's
rights. A report was published in 1978 of the Parliamentary Select
Commmittee on Race Relations and Immigration. This committee,
which was composed of representatives from all the parties in the
House of Commons, recommended that the government attack the
right of our dependants in our countries of origin to join us here, and
at the same time, allow the police to step up their harassment of our
communities in the search for so-called illegal immigrants.
But one of the most serious threats posed by the report is to the
future of black families and black culture. One of the
recommendations of the report was that children over twelve years
old born abroad to those settled here will not be allowed to join their
parents. This kind of legislation has caused great bitterness because
of the way in which it breaks up black families.6

Usha: I have two children in India. I can't see any reason for them
not to be allowed to come and join their mother. They are being
looked after by my mother. That's why I am working, to save
enough money to bring them all over here. I have a wish to look
after them ourselves. The government has to take notice of our
customs. If I don't bring my mother here, she will be on her own
with no one to look after her. Everyone should be able to bring their
families and close relatives here.

In this section we have tried to establish a historical continuity: of

who black people are, how we came to Britain, under what
circumstances and what has been happening since we have been
here. As one woman said:7

They ruled and looted our countries for many years and took most
of our wealth away. And now we come and live here and work
hard, they start going on about us taking away their houses and
their jobs. What do they think they were doing when they came to
our countries? (P. Parmar, ‘Asian Women Stand Firm’ in Bradford
Black, Bradford Black Collective, May/June 1978)
Black female stereotypes

So what's it like for a black girl growing up in England today? There

are lots of pressures, of course, to be this or to be that. In a sense
black girls fall outside the stereotypical images which bombard white
women every day of their lives. These images relate to all aspects of
life, e.g. the family, where unreal images of family life are portrayed
on television, particularly in advertisements. The most important area,
however, is that of sexuality – the whole way in which girls and
women are pressured to see themselves (especially) in relation to
other people, particularly men. Girls aren't expected to think for
themselves – all this is supposed to be for the male to do. Women
aren't expected to think, to have ideas, to be creative. Girls have little
or no opportunity to break out of this vicious circle because the only
things open to them are marriage or work in a tedious monotonous
job which is often described by career officers in glowing terms. Girls,
then, don't have any real choice and for black girls the problems they
face because of their colour worsens the situation.
Why is it that the images of the family presented in the media have
so little relevance to the family situation of the majority of black
women in this country? It all stems from the ways in which black
people are perceived in this society. Black family life is seen as being
in some way peculiar and different, and this difference means that the
black family has no status, particularly in relation to the way in which
the white, nuclear family structure is seen. Black family life can't be
described or explained in those terms so it has to be denigrated.
Black women are seen and represented in a particular way by
white society. The stereotypes differ for the Afro/Caribbean and the
Asian communities, but despite the difference in the stereotypes the
racism underlying them is the same. Women of Asian origin range
from being seen as sexually exotic creatures, full of ‘Eastern
promise’, to being seen as completely dominated by their menfolk,
oppressed wives and mothers who have little or nothing to say in
relation to their families.
The images seem very far removed from the reality of life as lived
by so many women in the Asian community. Working in sweat shops,
as a number of them do, for low pay in overcrowded conditions.
Facing constant harassment, not only on the street, physically, but
also culturally, with attacks and abuse which attempt to degrade and
denigrate their way of life. The criticisms of family life are again based
on a number of ‘common sense’ images of what family life in the
Asian community is supposed to be all about. Asian people are said
to live in overcrowded conditions, eat different food, wear different
clothes and even speak a different language. All these things present
a threat to what are seen as the dominant values of white society
because Asians don't want to mesh in, they maintain their cultural
traditions as far as that is possible, looking to each other for the
strength and support they require to cope with living in a racist
society.
In the Afro/Caribbean community stereotypes also exist but as
mentioned before they are different. Women of Afro/Caribbean origin
have long been outside Western definitions of beauty. In sexual
terms, they are perceived as ‘prostitutes’. They have children outside
the marriage relationship and in a number of cases do not even
aspire to marriage. They are also seen as ‘caring’ women –
personifying motherhood and domesticity. The image here is of the
black Mamma or nurse ruling the kitchen or nursery with an ‘iron
glove’. But there is another, even more familiar, stereotype that we
would like to examine and challenge. One which is often used as a
means of demonstrating the so-called ‘backwardness’ of black
culture; the myth of arranged marriages.

The myth of arranged marriages

The practice of arranged marriages is most frequently used as an

explanation for the oppression of Asian girls. It is one area which has
received frequent sensational news headlines in the papers and
many television programmes have been made about it. Most of this
coverage has given a distorted and false picture of the tradition and
practice of arranged marriages. The overall stereotypical image is
that of Asian girls caught between two cultures, her parents’ culture
and the culture of her white English peers. Asian girls are said to see
their white friends at school or work going out to discos and films and
‘choosing’ their own boyfriends and potential husbands, while they
(the poor Asian girls) are forced into a marriage with someone who is
usually twice their age, someone who doesn't understand the English
romantic etiquette like white men do and, of course, someone whom
they have never seen until the actual wedding ceremony. Asian girls
are said to have absolutely no ‘freedom’ to partake in the choosing of
their husbands while white English girls have all the ‘freedom’ they
want or need. If Asian girls had the same degree of so-called ‘choice’
about their marriage then it would help to create a more integrated
society. Invariably, it's the parents with their archaic ideas who are
seen as stopping this integration into white British society.
The stereotype that we have outlined might seem a little crude, but
these are the ideas and attitudes which are dominant amongst most
white people.
Nothing, however, could be further from the reality. This kind of
gross generalisation has led to many myths about the practice of
arranged marriages (we are not denying that arranged marriages are
oppressive, but marriage as practised in white British culture is also
oppressive).
What we want to challenge is the illusion that white girls have a
great deal of choice about whom they marry. The reality is that, in the
majority of cases, if they marry they will marry boys from a similar
class background, in the same region or geographical area.
For example, what chance does a white working-class girl who has
left school at sixteen with a few or no CSE's and is working in a
factory or doing a typing course, have of meeting up with and
marrying a white middle-class boy who has been to the local
grammar school, then university, and is professionally employed. Not
only is there not much chance of these two every marrying, but
there's not much chance of them ever even meeting.
So ‘choice’, ‘arrangement’ and ‘freedom’ are all relative concepts
and often it is people's class which determines whom they meet, and
whom they marry, more than any romantic or idealistic notions of
falling in love with ‘Mr Right’ who happens to fatefully cross your path.
For Asian girls, the amount of choice they have over whom they
marry varies a lot from one Asian community to another, and from
one Asian family to another. Some parents are more strict than
others, just like some white English parents exercise more control
over their children than others.
 The following discussion between three fifteen-year-old Asian girls
shows many similarities in their experiences of staying out late, etc.
with that of their white peers. It also shows the closeness of some
girls and their parents and destroys the myth of the Asian parents
who keep their daughters locked up and chained in their rooms.

Kamaljit: I've known this boy for about two years now. We aren't
thinking of getting married yet but if I was to tell my parents about it
they would agree because he is my religion. Besides, all my sisters
have married who they wanted to, so I don't see why they should
refuse me. My mum knows this boy and she doesn't mind, but if he
was English I think she would mind. I don't know how she would
react. She wouldn't go angry, but she would tell me not to see him.
Then it would be up to me to decide whether to see him or not. But
I am the sort who can't leave a family but can leave a boy.

Yasmin: My brother is going out with an English girl and both my

parents have seen them together and they don't say anything about
it. But when they see me with a lad they always tell me off. My
brother can stop out all night and they don't let me stop out even
until midnight. Boys get more privileges than girls.

Rekha: My parents are all right because they let my sisters and I go
anywhere we want to and come back when we like too. They are
the same with my brother. It's all right as long as they know where
we are going and who we are with.

Talking about going out in the evening:

Kamaljit: I love the disco's and the parties. My friend and I go to a

disco together. . . . We go about 8 and come back at 2 a.m. My
mum says it's all right as long as I go with a friend.

Rekha: Since I have grown up in England I have been brought up

to expect all these things. I like them, and if I went back to Africa I
would like it but I would miss all the disco's and fashions. My
parents like the clothes I wear.
 Yasmin: My parents don't like pop music and when I wear a dress
which is a bit low they usually tell me off for wearing it.

Talking about who they can discuss boyfriends, etc. with at home:

Rekha: I can talk about a few things to my mum, about friends but I
don't think I would talk about boyfriends. I can talk about boys
generally to my sisters, but not saying I am going out with one.

Kamaljit: I am always telling my parents about my boyfriend. He is

Indian and he comes to the house. My mother doesn't mind as long
as I tell her everything. But I only tell my personal problems to my
best friend. But my parents are broad-minded and they understand.

Rekha: My mother understands. I don't tell my father. There was

this Indian boy going with me and she found out. I went on seeing
him and she knew and didn't even tell my father.

One of the things the above discussion shows is that the problems
Asian girls experience vis-à-vis their parents are often very similar to
white English girls even though their difficulties are caused by
different factors. The generalisations made about Asian parents
forcing their daughters into arranged marriages gives a distorted
picture of Asian cultural practices and ignores the positive and
constructive relationship most girls have with their parents.
Photograph by
Pratibha Parmar

As we have said, there are many pressures on black girls growing

up in England to fit into one stereotyped image or another. We have
tried to show what some of these pressures are and also what the
myths are about their lives, particularly in the area of sexuality, but
there are also pressures of a different sort for black girls at work, at
school and on the streets.

Action and reaction

The exploitation of black female labour is often overlooked because

so many employment statistics and reports focus on the employment
situation as it affects black men, especially as it is often assumed that
black women have greater access to employment opportunities. What
are these opportunities then?
Black women of Asian origin have had to come to terms with whole
new spheres of experience, particularly in the area of employment,
and they have had to redefine their many roles. Their economic
situation makes it important for black women to work and they have
to work in order to supplement the family wage. The Grunwick
dispute was an example of the way in which black workers defied
management and asserted their right to engage in trade union
activity. The relationship of women, especially black women, to trade
union activity has traditionally been one of indifference because
unions have consistently ignored the needs of black female workers.
Many women work because they have to, but the man in the family is
still regarded by many as the main wage earner. This situation is
changing because so many black women are now the sole wage
earners in their families. Increasingly, black women have become
active in trade union disputes and the militant position taken by them
has helped to shatter a number of illusions held about women and
work and has also gone some way to dispelling some of the
stereotypical images of black women mentioned earlier.
The Grunwick dispute is perhaps the most well-known example of
the way in which black women have been fighting back. A number of
black women challenged the authority of the State and the agents of
state power, the police, in a confrontation which lasted for several
months. This is how one worker describes the conditions at Grun-
wick's: ‘They treat us like animals here. . . . We had to get permission
to go to the toilet. It was a sort of rule of terror. In this day and age,
the treatment we got was worse than in Roots.’ (Race Today, 1977)8
These women won an important victory. By refusing to be intimidated
by the management of the firm, they and their supporters showed the
importance of a unified struggle by black people.
Black women have also been at the forefront of nursing disputes
throughout the 1970s agitating for better pay, better working
conditions and shorter hours. Nursing is seen as a caring profession
suitable for women.9

No woman is more identified with service work than black women. .

. . The relationship between the black woman and nursing of other
people's children and other people's husbands and wives, dates
from before any National Health Service. Whether working in
hospitals as auxiliaries, SEN, or SRN, in the head of the black
 nurse from the Caribbean is the echo of slavery, in the head of the
Asian nurse is the servitude to Sahib and Memsahibs. (Race
Today, August 1974)

Black women today no longer believe the myths about nursing: that
nursing is a vocation that gives them dignity and responsibility. They
have come to realise they are exploited as much in hospitals as they
are in factories, laundries and sweat shops. A number of racist
practices operate within the hospital hierarchy. Initially black nurses
are channelled into doing the SEN course, a course which cannot
lead to promotion, rather than SRN. As one nurse said:10

When you are interviewed they ask you if you want to do the
course in two years or three, and all of us said we would like to do
the two year course. It's only when you get here that you realise
that if you do two years, you will be an SEN. (Race Today, August
1974)

Black nurses also complain that in a number of instances the

practical teaching, help and advice they should get on the wards,
white nurses are not prepared to give them. Black nurses have
responded to the racism they face in these situations by organising
strikes, work-to-rules and other forms of resistance.
Schools are another area where black girls have experienced
racism not only from some white teachers and heads but also from
their white peers. Asian girls are often picked on for the way they
dress or for the food they eat.

Mumtaz: I have been called things like Paki and wog ever since I
came to this school and ever since I moved into this area. I have
got used to it now. People are a bit more friendly now.

Nisha: I think this school is better than most because at schools

like E . . . or T . . . . the Indians sit on one side and the English on
the other. They call each other names and almost every day there's
a fight. The girl next door goes to T . . . and she says I am different
from other Indians, but I don't know how she means. She says that
they smell. I think she's a bit stupid.
 Rita: I get hurt by what they say, but I know they are just being
stupid. They don't know what they are saying. They are only saying
it because they are frightened of our culture and because they don't
really understand it, I think if they know a bit more they might
understand.

It's not only in schools that girls come under racist attacks, but also
in their homes and on the streets.

Gulshan: It's worse where I live, because we are the only Indian
family. Our next door neighbours are all right, but the people living
further away call us names. ‘Go back where you came from’, ‘wog’,
’Paki’, ‘We are the National Front’ and all the rest. I just ignore
them.

Many girls fight back.

Nisha: If somebody calls me Paki I would go to them and kick them

in the teeth. I don't often get called names, just about once a year,
and then I get really angry and hit them. If somebody said that to
me I would say ‘Pink ice cream’. There are some English people in
our country and we don't go around calling them names.

There are many racist practices in schools and in education

generally that we have not mentioned. For example, bussing of black
children into other areas, racist curriculum, the dumping of black
children in educationally subnormal schools and biased intelligence
tests. A more recent form of racist practice is the growing use of
disruptive units or ‘sin-bins’ as they are commonly called. A high
percentage of children in educationally subnormal schools or
remedial units are West Indian. And if there is no room in these
places then black children are suspended from schools on the quiet.
All these are attempts by the authorities to try and control black
children, make them passive and discipline them for the lowest paid
and dirtiest jobs on the market.
As can be seen, no areas of black people's lives are untouched by
the racism of British society. But despite these attempts to stereotype,
control and demoralise them, black people have put up resistances
and fought to gain control over their lives.

Conclusion

We would like to conclude by stating what we see as the importance

of the growth and development of a black women's movement in
Britain. We have tried to show a number of the ways in which racism
limits and circumscribes the lives of black girls in Britain. We have
tried to present that experience as it is lived. Racism, however, is not
the only oppression a black woman faces. She is also oppressed in
class terms, as part of the working class, and in gender terms,
because she is a woman.
Existing political organisations cannot always incorporate all these
struggles and although we feel that as black women we should
organise with other black people against the racism in this society,
and as part of the working class we should organise around the
issues of work and non-work, and as women we should organise with
other women, as black women we also need to organise separately
around the issues that are particular to our experiences as black
women, experiences which come out of the triple oppression we face.
Most girls have a distorted image of what the Women's Liberation
Movement is all about and what organising in a women's movement
means. The only contact they may have with the ideas of women's
liberation is through television or maybe through what men say about
it. Black girls see the movement as dominated by white, middle-class
women who in many cases fail to recognise the specific and complex
nature of black women's oppression. For these reasons black girls
feel they have nothing in common with a movement which doesn't
even realise they exist.
It is all very well for white women to demand equal pay and
abortion on demand but equal pay with whom, the other black women
working in the overcrowded sweat shop or in the hot laundry or
working as auxiliary nurses and cleaners? In asking for abortions on
demand, white women are failing to recognise what contraception
and abortion mean to black women. It may mean being sterilised
without your knowledge or consent, it means black women being
used as guinea pigs in experiments for new drugs, it means
contraceptives like depo provera which have numerous side effects
being used on black women, but not on white women. A number of
women also fail to understand and recognise the importance placed
by black women on having children. Having a child is sometimes the
only way in which a black girl can show that she has some control
over herself. It may be the only thing she wants that she can have.
The main issue here is the gap which exists between the
experience of black women who face racism every day in addition to
their oppression in class and gender terms and white women who are
afraid to confront their own racism. White women fail to understand a
number of the cultural traditions which exist in the black community
and the important part they play in our growth and development as
black women. They simply label practices they do not understand as
oppressive and although there are some issues which we need to
fight together as women, white women need to come to terms with
the fact that they are part and parcel of a racist system, they are
oppressors and as such are distanced from a number of the problems
which black women confront every day.11
Despite the tremendous pressures on black women living in Britain,
the militant action that many have taken has destroyed the illusion of
the passive or apathetic black woman. In this chapter we have
challenged the many myths that exist about black women and in so
doing have shown the strength of black womanhood. As black sisters
we all have to be involved in re-creating our own history, constantly
questioning and fighting attempts which are made to oppress us. We
should be organising wherever we are, at school, work, home or in
the community, and in this way demonstrate the importance of our
struggle.

Notes
1 We are both members of the Race and Politics Group at the Centre for Con temporary
Cultural Studies, Birmingham University. This group is currently working on a book entitled
‘White Power, Black Struggle – Britain in the 1970’s’ to be published by Hutchinsons.
Some of the issues touched on in this article will be developed more fully in that book.
Other members of the group are: H. Carby, B. Findlay, P. Gilroy, A. Green, S. Jones, E.
Lawrence, J. Solomos and R. Wilson.
 2 Black Women in Britain – Speak Out, Organisation of Women of Asian and African
Descent, 1979.
3 The Views of Social Workers in Multi-Racial Areas, Commission for Racial Equality, April
1977.
4 Stuart Hall, ‘Racism and Reaction’, in Five Views of Multi-Racial Britain, Commission for
Racial Equality.
5 Our Lives – Young People's Autobiographies, Inner London Education Authority.
6 A. Sivanandan, ‘Race, Class and the State’, The Black Experience in Britain, Institute of
Race Relations, 1976.
7 Parmar, P.: ‘Asian Women Stand Firm’, Bradford Black, May/June 1978, The Bradford
Black Collective.
8 Ibid.
9 Race Today, 1977, Race Today Collective.
10 Race Today, 1974.
11 Ibid.
Photograph by
Pam Bloor
Photograph by
Pam Bloor
Photograph by
Pam Bloor
Photograph by
Pam Bloor
Part II

Making changes
9 Romance and sexuality:
between the devil and the deep blue
sea?
Myra Connell, Tricia Davis, Sue McIntosh,
Mandy Root
Illustrated by Charlotte Tucker
We think we should say something about who we are and why we've
tried to write this chapter. We're four women, in our twenties and
thirties, who are studying aspects of women's lives (young and
middle-aged), but want our work to be useful. We work (some of the
time) together, and we know each other fairly well, but we have
developed a lot of our ideas in the context of the Women's
Movement generally, not just with each other. We come from
different backgrounds, and we've been to a range of schools
(secondary modern, grammar, private), and we're all white. This is
very important, we think, for this article. We have tried to think about
experience other than our own, but this has been easier in relation to
class than to race. The reason we've left questions of race alone is
that we know so little about the way in which girls experience
sexuality in cultures other than ours. Indian girls, for instance,
probably vary in their experiences depending on the regional and
religious traditions in their families. Living in Britain provides another
set of conditions and values, and many conflicts. It would be
presumptuous of us to try and talk about this as white women.
However, we're not all that happy about having separate chapters on
West Indian and Asian girls either – this implies that they are totally
separate and different – which is, of course, untrue. Perhaps all we
can say is that this is an imperfect solution.
 The way we wrote this was to discuss ideas with friends, other
students, teenage girls, and each other, look at magazines and
books, and gradually work out themes. We also spent an evening
with a tape recorder and some drink, discussing our own teenage
sexuality and ‘romantic’ experiences, accompanied by a lot of
laughter and vulgarity! We know we represent different generations
of teenage (each one only spans seven years, after all), so we
haven't taken ourselves as proof of anything. But it was interesting to
find that we did have many experiences in common – groping with
boys in cars or cinemas, going to dances and discos, finding that the
image of the knight on a white horse and the maiden in distress was
hard to maintain in the face of reality, and wondering whether loving
men was worth the effort and if not what were the alternatives.
 We also think we need to say something about our own sexual
orientations and choices. We have had different experiences –
relating to men, and to women. Sometimes this has been
monogamous (meaning full commitment to one person only),
sometimes not. We have all found it difficult to question what we do
sexually, but have chosen to do that rather than accept the restriction
of not questioning it. This connects to our reasons for writing this. As
feminists, we think that female sexuality is still very little discussed,
and certainly not in a way that copes with the physical, emotional,
social and political levels that we feel it operates at. We think of our
teenage (and our current lives!) as a period of tremendous
confusion, in the face of a conspiracy of silence on what really goes
on about sex, emotions and relationships. So, although this chapter
has nearly driven us mad at times, and we are very aware of its
inadequacies, we hope it at least helps to start the discussion.

Romantic stories: ‘I love you with all my heart’

‘I think I understand now what Mama . . . meant when she told me

only to . . . give myself to ... a man I loved with ... all my heart.’
‘You love me like that?’ the Earl asked.
‘I love you with all my heart . . . my body . . . and my soul. I love
you with ... all of me. And I want you to tell me how I can give you
... all of myself.’
She reached up her arms as she spoke to put them round his
neck and draw his head down to hers.
‘My darling, my love, my wife!’
His lips, passionate, insistent, demanding, held her captive, she
felt his hands touching her, his heart pounding against hers.
Then Syringa knew that he lifted her towards the stars and there
was nothing in the whole universe save themselves and their love.

This is the last scene of a romantic novel by Barbara Cartland.

We've begun with it because although Barbara Cartland probably
appeals more to older women, we think that the extract contains
several ideas that are typical of countless other romantic stories in
novels, magazines and films. These romantic ideas have had a
definite place in our lives, and not just as something we have read
and enjoyed in an escapist way. Romance has seeped into our real
lives, and coloured the way we feel about the emotional and sexual
relationships we have had. We don't know whether it has the same
place in your life as it has in ours – every group of young women will
see and use romance in a different way; but we think it is unlikely
that you could be a girl in this society and not be touched in some
way by romance.
 So what are these ideas that are typical of romance?
Romance, first of all, is something that is supposed to happen to
you, something that only fate can bring about. In the stories girls
aren't supposed to go out and find relationships, they're supposed to
wait passively for the boy to make the first move.
Second, in romantic fiction the woman is supposed to be totally
ignorant about sex. Syringa spends the whole book absolutely
unaware that her feelings for the earl have anything to do with sex.
Even in this scene where, safely married, they have got into bed
together, she doesn't know at all what she's supposed to do.
Furthermore, she expects him to be able to teach her. With typically
hesitant speech she says: ‘I want you ... to tell me . . . how I can give
you . . . myself, and then ‘he lifted her . . . towards the stars’. There
are two points to make about this: one is that there is a double
standard in operation; allowing, expecting and needing him to have
had some sexual experience (and in fact we have seen him earlier in
the book, moving in a sated kind of way among ‘loose women’ who
have been ‘throwing themselves at him’), while insisting that she
must be virginal. And second, it seems rather odd to imagine that a
man should know more about a woman's sexuality than she does
herself. In our experience, men find women's sexual needs quite
difficult to understand, needing lots of explanation.
Which brings us on to the next point. Syringa's first sexual
experience is set to be magical. It's going to be tremendously
exciting and absolutely successful. Our culture is full of grand
images about sex making the earth move. It may be overwhelming at
times; but those times are quite unlikely to include the first one. We
want to suggest that the way sex is seen in romantic fiction implies
that it's something mystical and magical, whereas in fact we think it
is something that needs to be learnt about and looked at openly, and
which gets better with practice.
‘There was nothing in the whole universe save themselves and
their love.’ Love, in romantic fiction, excludes everything else,
particularly for the woman. True love (which isn't usually clearly
analysed as a feeling, but is magically recognised) is always for ever
and always in the end leads to marriage. Again, in our experience,
love often lasts a very short time, and the kind of passionate sexual
feeling that by tradition blinds you to everything else is by no means
the only or ideal reason for choosing someone to marry. Love
typically causes confusion, not clear thinking. ‘How do you know
when you're in love?’ asked one of the girls we worked with; and
then answers, ‘I'm moody, miserable and confused.’
Often also, in romantic fiction, the moment of falling in love with a
man, or of realising that that has happened, involves some
association with violence. It is as if the only man who can awaken
the woman's sexuality, who can get over the feeling in her that sex is
something nasty that nice girls don't do, is one who can master her,
dominate her, force her into it. Syringa realises she loves the earl
when, mistakenly thinking that she has been ‘loose’, he kisses her
brutally. Then, after he has flung himself out of the room, ‘his face
contorted into the visage of a devil’, she
put a trembling hand to her lips, and as she did so, as she felt
them bruised and painful to her own touch, she knew she loved
him!
 This was love, this streak of fire that had swept through her
even as he had held her so roughly in his arms and kissed her so
brutally!
It was almost like a blinding light to realise that what she had felt
for him all along was not the affection of a friend but the love of a
woman for a man! (pp. 157-8)

Many of the ideas about love that are in this novel are, as we have
said, also to be found in more modern magazines and comics. Girls
may now be allowed to have some interest in and knowledge about
sex; but a distinction is still made between nice girls and girls who
‘go too far’; and it is the boys whose wants and needs dominate: the
girls adapt to them rather than the other way round, even to the
extent of altering their bodies by dieting and cosmetics in order to
match the boy's standard. Sex in fiction is still something magical
and more powerful than anything else, and once the girl has got her
boy, as the story ends with the wonderful kiss, we are left with the
impression that all the problems are now solved, that having found a
partner means peace and security maybe true to some extent, but
not in every case and not in the sense that life will no longer involve
any difficulties. The trouble is that although women know that many
marriages that began with a couple in love end in divorce, we still
keep the romantic notion alive in our heads that for us it will be
different, we'll be the exception to the rule. And the fiction's constant
concentration on love, to the exclusion of work and other
relationships, implies relentlessly that love, meaning relationships
with boys, is the most important thing in girls’ lives.
What we want to do in this chapter is to bring into question some
of the romantic ideas about love and sexuality. Most commonly in
our society, love, sex, and marriage are expected to go together. You
can't, or shouldn't, have sex without love, it's usually said; love
ideally leads to marriage which lasts for ever; sex and/or love
between people of the same sex is ignored or laughed at or seen as
a passing phase.
We ourselves haven't experienced these things in the way that
most people are expected to. We've had sexual experiences which
have not led to marriage and have not been about love, though they
have been positive and good; not all our sexual experience has been
with men. As we've talked about it, both in working on this chapter
and previously in our experience in the women's movement, we've
realised that many other women feel the same sort of conflict
between what it's supposed to be like and what it really feels like.
 The rest of this chapter is in four sections. First we look at how
women's sexuality is represented in advertising and then at the way
in which women are talked about in sex manuals. Our argument will
be that in both of these, femininity means passivity and subservience
to men. After that we look at some of the differences between these
representations and women's actual experience; and in the last
section we discuss some of the possible alternatives to a whole-
hearted acceptance of romance.

Advertising from the girls next door to the liberated lady

Mass media advertising is, for most of us, a constant part of our daily
lives and images of women in advertisements play an important role
in telling us what femininity is supposed to be. Wherever we go, in
the streets, the cinema, the underground, even at home, we're
confronted with a barrage of supposedly glamorous images of
women. Their purpose, it seems, is to sell us the products which will
remove our ‘imperfections’ so that we too can be glamorous.
There is nothing wrong, of course, in wanting to feel good about
the way we look. Experimenting with different images of ourselves
can be an important part of self-discovery, and fun too. But showing
women as wanting to feel good about ourselves for ourselves is not
what mass media advertising is about. For a start, advertisements
imply that we should all look alike. They also assume that looking
good means looking good for men, and that feeling good means
knowing that men admire you. Sometimes this is expressed in very
obvious ways. If you look carefully at advertisements you'll find that a
common theme is the ‘glamorous woman’ with one or two men in
tow. The message which is put across loudly and clearly is that
product X – anything from a brand of drink to a particular perfume –
will increase ‘sex appeal’ and, therefore, the chances of being loved
by men.
Men don't even have to be present in the advertisements though.
We see ourselves, and women in advertisements are seen, through
the eyes of real or potential men. This is a more difficult point to
make, but John Berger has put it very well in a book called Ways of
Seeing. He writes:
According to usage and convention, which are at last being
questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social
presence of woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's
presence is dependent upon the promise of power which it
embodies. By contrast a woman's presence expresses her own
attitude to herself and defines what can and cannot be done to
her. . . . Men act, women appear.
In other words, the male body seems to mean power because being
masculine in our society is about being powerful. The female body in
our society has totally different connotations. It comes across as
passive and available. This can be seen more clearly, perhaps, if the
figure of a woman in an advertisement is changed into a man. The
meaning of the advertisement is transformed. It often becomes
meaningless and ridiculous. Because of the different meanings
attached to the male and female body, advertisements selling male
cosmetics, on the whole, avoid using the male body and simply
suggest it, either through props or with the help of the phallic
symbolism of packaging. If a man does appear in the advertisement,
the ‘sales appeal’ is built on a different set of assumptions to those
used to sell products to women. A current (1980) advertisement for
male cosmetics, for example, shows the range of male toiletries and
cosmetics. In the background is a framed photo of a man in a dinner
jacket. On one arm is a glamorous woman. His other arm shields his
face from a photographer. The caption reads: ‘It's not just the way he
looks that makes him what he is.’ Clearly, masculinity is about doing,
being ‘somebody’. The man who buys this particular brand of
cosmetics buys them because of who he is. Many advertisements
selling cosmetics to women, on the other hand, suggest that women
buy cosmetics in order to become somebody. She is often shown as
nothing more than a collection of products. ‘Dress by X, stockings by
Y, hair by Z.’
So the sexuality of women, while it seems much more assertive in
advertisements than in romantic fiction, is just as dependent upon
the presence of a man or the ability to get a man. Sex is still
something done to a woman. The goal is to be irresistible, not
confident enough to take initiative oneself. In advertisements, too,
because the product is presented as the solution to every problem,
the sexually desirable image is the answer to all problems.
Advertisements tell us that with product Y we will be loved, and
therefore able to love ourselves. What more could any woman want?
The answer to that is – quite a bit – and, over the past few years,
advertising has changed in response to changes in women's lives. A
new image has been added, and smiling out at us from the pages of
women's magazines we now see not only ‘the femme fatale’, ‘the girl
next door’, ‘the sleeping beauty’, but also ‘the liberated lady’. She
works, she has her own bank account and steps out into the world
with a confident smile on her face. Looking at this new image more
carefully, though, we find that it's only expressing a new variation on
what is basically the old definition of femininity. What is stressed in
the ‘liberated lady’ image is not that women do paid work, let alone
that their work is usually underpaid and low status. The statement
made is that paid work gives a woman the spending power to
increase her value as a sexually desirable object. She can, for
example, buy that bright red sports car and drive off with the wind
spreading her blonde hair conveniently out behind her. An alternative
message is that even whilst working women remain sexually
desirable to men, and that this is much more important than whether
she likes her job, how much she gets paid and so on. Not only does
her nail varnish not chip, but it is her make-up, not her, which in the
words of one advertisement, ‘works an eight hour day.’

Sex manuals: science makes sex respectable

Although the idea of sex manuals is as old as the hills, there has
been a boom in them since the 1960s, and particularly since the so-
called ‘sexual revolution’ and the dawning of ‘permissiveness’. But it
was the Kinsey Report, published in Britain in 195 3 as Sexual
Behavior in the Human Female, which really marked the beginning
of this trend. The report was based on information collected from
8,000 women and although it recognised that for a whole complex of
reasons women weren't as likely as men to seek out sexual
experience, it did none the less assert on paper that women could
enjoy sex and gave this assertion scientific status. During the 1950s
and 1960s many books on sexuality were produced which took up
this theme of women's ability to enjoy sex. In fact, sexual enjoyment
for women, as long as it was within marriage, became not just a right
but a duty. And in this sense it was a double-edged discovery.
Women were suddenly being encouraged from almost every
direction to have more sex. Without going into it in more detail, it is
possible to interpret this as an attempt to stabilise the family in
society, by servicing, to an even greater extent, men's sexual needs.
And so, underlying this ‘progressive’ recognition was a very clear
idea about how and where such sexuality was to be expressed.
 The arrival of the pill as a method of contraception in the mid-
1960s increased the belief that women are now as sexually free as
men and those of us who grew up during the 1960s and 1970s have
become used to being told that we live in a ‘permissive society’; that
whether we approve or not, sex and love need no longer be linked
together; and that technique, not feeling, is the key to good sexual
experience. The large number of sex manuals appearing in
bookshops seems convincing evidence in support of these
arguments. We want to ask, though, how far the sex manuals do get
away from old definitions of sexuality like those offered in romantic
fiction and whether the break that some of them make between sex
and romantic love really offers anything for women?
On the positive side, sex manuals have contributed to more
openness about sex and ‘sexual problems’ and have continued to
emphasise, as they did in the 1950s, that women can enjoy sex,
which is at least something. Certainly in our mothers’ generation this
was not widely accepted.
At the same time, the underlying assumptions of many of these
manuals have created false definitions of what the problems are and,
therefore, have led to limited solutions. This is true of even the more
helpful ones. The New Sex Therapy by Helen Singer Kaplan
(Penguin, 1978), for example, describes a sexual therapy which
involves activities like touching and caressing a sexual partner
without pressure to perform sexually. This emphasis on general
sensuality is perhaps particularly important for us as women. Kaplan
doesn't simply assume that romantic love leads to sexual fulfilment,
she also shows how social factors affect our sexual responses. She
points out, for example, that a woman's failure to have an orgasm
may be due to over-anxiety about pleasing a partner and that this
anxiety is caused by the stress in our society on women's
dependence on men. On the other hand, the book assumes that
sexuality is solely something that happens between heterosexual
couples rather than part of a person's general relationship to herself
which can be expressed in many different ways and in different
relationships. A woman, in other words, need not be innocent, but,
just as in romantic fiction, she is seen to need a man to complete her
sexual identity.
 In many other sex manuals the heterosexual couple is even more
clearly accepted as a norm. Robert Chartham in Advice to Women
(Tandem, 1971) describes both homosexuality and masturbation as
‘poor substitutes’. In fact, Chartham sees the correct place for the
expression of sexuality as being in marriage. But not only does he
assume that heterosexuality in marriage is the norm, he also sees
male sexuality as the standard against which all sexuality is judged.
In Chartham's view, if a sexual relationship is not satisfactory then it
is the woman who has to change. She has to become a more active
sexual partner in order to prevent the man from going off in search of
sexual satisfaction elsewhere. There is no indication that the woman
might do this if her needs are not met, for, according to Chartham,
women's sexuality is linked to her emotions. Men, on the other hand,
are more concerned with the physical experience of sex, and
therefore, ‘by nature’ are polygamous. In Chartham's book it might
not be the man who teaches the woman about sexuality, as in the
romantic novels. But it is still the man whose sexuality and sexual
satisfaction is at the centre of the relationship.
Almost all sex manuals use the format of the expert on sexuality
giving advice. Women's own experience is used to illustrate points
rather than to make them. This form, in itself, tends to distort our
view of female sexuality, obscuring its relationship to other aspects
of our lives and implying a standard which each woman should
measure up to. As Shere Hite puts it, in her Introduction to The Hite
Report:

Women have never been asked how they felt about sex.
Researchers looking for statistical ‘norms’ have asked all the
wrong questions for all the wrong reasons – and often wound up
telling women how they should feel, rather than asking them how
they do feel. Female sexuality has been seen essentially as a
response to male sexuality. There has rarely been any
acknowledgement that female sexuality might have a complex
nature of its own which would be more than just a logical
counterpart of (what we think of as) male sexuality.
 The Joys of Sex by Alex Comfort doesn't adopt this formula of the
expert giving good advice and, although edited by the expert (in the
form of Dr Comfort), it is supposedly written by an anonymous
married couple. It starts from the assumption that sex is fun, rather
than that its readers have problems, and it manages to avoid making
sexuality and emotions seem like one and the same thing, but only
by avoiding the emotions altogether. Sexuality in The Joys of Sex is
a series of fantasy games. Although the woman partner joins in
these games, underlying the fantasies (which have names like
Burglar and Maiden, Master and Slave, Sultan and Concubine), is
the very clear assumption that not only is women's sexuality
complementary to men's but it is actually subservient to it. The old
myth, used in so many romantic novels, that women need to be
swept off their feet, reappears in a thinly veiled and rather nasty
disguise.

Real life romance

One thing is clear. The images of women created in romantic novels,

in advertisements, and, indeed, in sex manuals, are miles away from
the ways in which most women live their lives. This section of the
chapter attempts to answer some questions about the way in which
women really experience romance. What is the secret of its
success? How can we account for its almost universal popularity,
especially when most women know in advance that its pleasures
pass so quickly, and that it's so clearly linked with the days, months,
and years of drudgery which follow it? Is it that women and girls are
simply fatalistic about the quality of life they expect and so welcome
romance as a brief happy interlude – with open arms? Or do they
see it as symbolising the high points of their emotional lives – the joy
of which is necessarily offset by the pain, hardship, self-sacrifice,
and hard work that follows it?
 It would be easy to argue that women have no choice; that the
power of the media and its obsession with romance; that commercial
pressures to buy romance objects (engagement rings, mementoes,
wedding dresses and so on) and that institutional expectations (at
school and in work) – all of these make it hard for women to avoid
romance – it is so deeply embedded into the very fabric of their lives.
The problem with this is, however, that women don't just blindly do
as they are told by the media – nor do they automatically obey all the
rules of romance. The way in which they do accept it, use it and
experience it – is part of a complex social process – romance ‘keys
into’ various aspects of women's lives and connects up with their
subordination in a far from simple way. In this section we will try to
make sense of these processes.
The most basic way in which romance operates is materially and
this is particularly true for working-class girls and women. In other
words, it relates to the very way in which women are forced to make
a living, to survive economically and to ‘make ends meet’. Let's put it
this way. Women and girls are faced with dull uninteresting jobs, with
little chance of good training, never mind promotion, and rarely if
ever are they encouraged into the kinds of collective activity
necessary to change this situation. It is not surprising, then, that
most girls opt for the most easily available individual solution. Boy,
romance, sports car, lazy weekend. In this context, girls are
exercising a kind of limited choice; maybe they're just making the
best of a bad deal, but there are none the less certain forms of action
involved. Romance doesn't magically just happen. Rather, it's the
result of unconscious choices, social pressures, and girls’ and
women's attempts to escape the boredom of everyday life. The
problem is that while dreams and fantasies play important,
necessary and pleasurable roles in our mental lives, they don't
themselves promise any concrete solutions – and when they
overtake reality they become stifling and oppressive.
Romance represents, then, a rational expression of, and response
to, material and economic subordination. With wages never likely to
cover the whole cost of their daily living expenses (rent or mortgage,
food and bills, leisure and childminder), girls and young women must
exploit their own ‘natural’ resources and thereby make sure that they
are not lacking in romantic opportunity. There is more to romance
than finance, but economics are a built-in component in all romantic
relationships. If girls weren't aware of all these factors, they might
well not pursue romance with the speed that they do. (My best friend
at school used to refuse to reply to the letters from her boyfriend at
boarding school – unless he included the stamps in his letters.)
This material element underlying most romantic attachments,
though basic, is not, however, its most prominent characteristic. This
is rather its capacity to give pleasure to its participants. So what
exactly are its pleasure-giving properties? Obviously its role in
shaping dreams, escapes and fantasies is crucial here. But when it
comes to everyday reality the picture isn't quite so clear. What we
want to suggest is that girls and women can use romance to
transform the more crudely sexual relationships offered to them by
boys and men and make them more palatable for female
consumption. That is, romance stresses all-over sensuality and
gentleness rather than straightforward genital sex, it demands
softness rather than aggression, sensitivity rather than ‘screwing’.
On top of this, girls’ ‘right’ to romance means that they can demand
that boys go through at least some of its motions to prove their
commitment and this in turn works as a kind of lever in the power
game in which in every other way they are disadvantaged from the
start.
And so, to the extent that romance does satisfy some of the girls’
and women's sexual needs, to the extent that it tips the balance of
power slightly in their favour, and to the extent that it replaces tough,
even brutal, sexual practices with softer more fragile ones, it can be
seen to represent some sort of attempt to impose a more desirable
set of images in the field of adolescent sexuality than those which
are purely male defined.
In pointing to this active, negotiating role we are not, however,
salvaging romance altogether. We are not saying that because
women inject humanising elements into male sexuality in the guise
of romance that this is the solution. Our aim is not to redeem it, but
to put it in a real context. To put it in its social setting and watch how
it works. And the first thing that should be said is that it's not all a
matter of coincidence (bus-stop, wet day, she's there, I say ‘Please
share my umbrella’ . . . that sort of thing). As a social fact, romance
is subjected to all sorts of conventions and constraints. The most
obvious of these is that boys and men make the first move, propose,
buy the engagement ring and so on. But there are other less tangible
factors in operation. Romances aren't embarked upon with just
anyone and most girls go out with boys from the same racial
background and social class and locality as themselves. They go to
the clubs, pubs and disco's where they are likely to meet the same
sort of boys as themselves, ‘a nice type’, as their mothers might put
it, and all sorts of difficulties arise when this invisible set of
conventions is broken. A ‘no-gooder’ is usually used to refer to a boy
of lower social class just as ‘a good catch’ refers typically to
somebody of slightly higher class. For a whole complex of reasons,
most parents want their daughters to marry someone ‘like ourselves’.
So romance isn't quite a matter of fate; heiresses marrying dustmen,
Cinderellas marrying princes are still the exception, never the rule.
Likewise, romantic encounters demand a lot of girls and women.
Not only being in the right place at the right time but also looking ‘just
right’. The handsome boy at the local cafe may be able to get away
with dirty jeans and greasy hair, but within romantic conventions girls
must always be looking their best. As far as we are concerned the
energy which girls are expected to put into the pursuit of romance is
misplaced, to say the least. Girls are certainly not all shrinking
violets, most know what they are looking for in a boyfriend and know
how to try and find him . . . what we want to question is not the goal
in itself but the amount of time and energy that must be invested in
the search.
We have already described the way in which romance can be
used as a kind of pleasurable counter to reality – a hope for a better
life – a vision of partnerships based on caring, loving, and sharing,
and not on him going out every night to the pub, to football on
Saturdays and to his mum's on Sundays. Our suggestion is, then,
that sometimes girls live out romance as a kind of antidote to their
real lives, to what is, in fact, the boringness of going steady, of
kissing in the back seat of his car and of listening to his tales of
magnificence on the football field. What girls often do is inject a
strong dose of melodrama and excitement into these liaisons and
thereby make their own leisure (and school and work) more thrilling.
A recent film by a German woman film director Petra Haffer,
portrayed this process with great clarity. In Madness. Life is all
Madness, the sixteen-year-old heroine finds her Jackie-type
boyfriend but then when she gets disillusioned about his charm and
passion she invents all sorts of roles for herself to play.
First, she imagines she is pregnant, then that she is abandoned by
her hero, and then as an Ophelia, a great tragic heroine, she sits in
class white-faced (lots of make-up) and red-eyed. She stays in every
night waiting for his car to pull up outside the door and when it
doesn't her drama is complete. Eventually she gets tired of this
particular piece of theatricals and finds a new role. She plays hard to
get, won't get into his car as he stops for her on her way home from
school and jumps on the bus giving him a new independent wave!
The pleasure which ‘Karen Q.’ derived from her romantic encounter
lay much more in the dramatics which she wove around it and then
related to her schoolfriends, than in the real thing.
But if romance can function as a fabrication – an embroidering on
reality it can also provide a negative kind of pleasure – at least it's an
improvement on the stage that went before. A real romance for most
girls is an altogether better deal than a one-night-stand, a quick
grope on the way home from the youth club and the fear of getting a
bad name, which usually accompanies such adventures. The fun
from being single has a lot more to do with girlfriends and best
friends than with close encounters with the opposite sex, and when
pressurised into conforming and finding a steady, most girls welcome
at least the escape that this represents from the cattlemarket
atmosphere which characterises the disco and even the pub.
Unfortunately, in opting for a more settled ‘loving’ relationship with
one boy, they are usually forced into abandoning their girlfriends and
doing without the pleasure of hanging around with them, as Dorothy
Hobson vividly illustrates in her chapter. What it comes to, in our
society, is one or the other; you can't have your cake and eat it. A
steady means no more flirting and fooling around with girlfriends at
the disco, but it also means the end of more brutal exploitation by
boys. It depends on fidelity, but insures against sexual abuse. Put so
bluntly, it begins to sound like blackmail. Romance operates as a
guarantee against loneliness, isolation and ‘failure’. If all the girls in
the class have a steady and go out in couples then joining the gang
and finding someone who is understanding, friendly, sexy and so on,
can be a relief, and in this sense maybe romance can seem like the
end of the problem. With the security of her boyfriend, the girl need
no longer worry about getting home late from the disco or the party;
she need not fear the sexual danger which is involved in one-night
stands; and, knowing that he will look after her, she can even drink
more than her usual Babycham. In other words she can sit back and
relax. Yet another kind of ‘social contract’ is in operation.
Hopefully we haven't totally demolished romance as a worthwhile
pastime. It certainly hasn't been our aim to invalidate all close
personal relationships with boys. And in so far as romance can mean
warmth, sharing and fun, either as real experience or as fantasy,
then maybe it's not such a bad deal. What we hope we have clarified
are the disproportionate demands it makes on girls and the
disappointment which it can result in. It's not that romance is a great
conspiracy which allows girls some (strictly limited) fun; rather that
it's difficult for girls to think of friendship or of sexuality with boys in
anything other than romantic terms. And the terms invariably place
women and girls in a subordinate role. If really understanding, loving,
sensitive boys are so thin on the ground then maybe it's time we
reassess the value of the search, maybe it's time we focused our
energies elsewhere. In the next section we are going to look at some
of the ways in which it is possible to step outside of romance and to
challenge the conventions which surround it. Not just by making
them more bearable, but by really doing something else, by refusing
to follow the conventions. What we are saying next is that there can
come a point where women can choose to reject romance because it
ceases to be worthwhile negotiating compromises and it becomes
worthwhile to break with it.

Alternatives to romance. ‘I've Got All My Life to Live!’

By now you may feel we are spoiling things by talking about them.
On the other hand, if you've got this far maybe some of it makes
sense. But does it spoil things to talk about them? Talking
realistically about romance doesn't necessarily mean removing the
fun and excitement from the usual romantic scenarios – the first
date, getting to know each other, going to the movies and so on. But
it does open the way for overcoming some of its unambiguous
pitfalls. In fact, talking with friends, attempting to separate out
feelings of emotion from those of desire, finding ways of being frank
with boyfriends and men about contraception, love-making, and the
need for ‘space’ – most of all being realistic about the limits of
romance, means you can in a sense have the best of both worlds –
the fun and excitement without the unrealistic decisions that can
result from relying on it uncritically.
First, we think that knowing more about love and sex than
romance offers means that you can have a more honest relationship
with your own self, and your body. You can admit that women have
sexual feelings but, because of years of tradition, know very little
about them and feel inhibited. You can quite easily experiment with
your body, enjoy it, get to know it without the pressure to please
anyone else. You can look in the mirror at your naked self; not
through the eyes of men. Some women have tried exploring their
bodies in small groups, with other women they trust, or with a close
woman friend. Others would rather do it alone. It is important to be
able to touch your body and learn what's exciting for you.
Masturbation is a word that has strange connotations and is usually
used anyway to refer to boys, but girls and women have just as
much right to this kind of pleasure as men and boys and it's not just
a question of getting to know your own body either. It is also
important to get to know yourself, to find out what you are like, what
you want and how you want to change. Girls are often brought up to
please others, to look nice, to be a good daughter or to please boys.
It takes a lot of courage to break through that and face what you
really want for yourself, it can be quite scary, almost like daring
yourself to take charge of what's going on, what's happening to you.
You can feel or be made to feel selfish, but it's not selfish to work out
what you want, it's a way of being honest and it's sometimes hard
work. If your friends are doing that too then you've got a much more
solid basis for friendship – you're starting off being open with each
other instead of playing games ‘I don't mind if you don't mind.’ ‘Suit
yourself.’ ‘See if I care.’ They can often be ways of getting other
people to make decisions for you, and women have traditionally
been encouraged into going along with this.
Just talking with close friends can be a way of exploring some of
these things, so can spending time on your own. There is nothing
wrong with choosing to spend an evening on your own. Sometimes
keeping a diary can help – it's a way of talking to yourself and
keeping track of your state (and changes) of mind. It's also private
and privacy is not only valuable but well worth fighting for – like no
one opening your letters – or the right to some space in your own
home – if not physical space then some time when you won't be
disturbed. Going out for a walk can be a way of getting this space.
Or taking a bus ride. After all how can you find out about yourself if
you're never alone?
Another question is boys. You may have been brought up to
please others, but they've probably been brought up to be
‘masculine’, tough, self-sufficient and independent, free to decide
how they want to enjoy themselves. In a group, boys invariably end
up taking over and dominating and girls become the ‘also-rans’, a
sort of audience for the boys. This is crazy, girls have just as much
right to a good time as boys, why should they always provide an
unofficial fan club?
One good thing about friendship groups is that you can get to
know boys in an ordinary way, without the tramlines of romance. If
you only think about boys in a sexual sense then it can be hard to
get to know them as friends. There's such pressure put on all girls to
get into a steady relationship with a boy as soon as possible. But
that's a kind of tyranny and can prevent you from having boys as
friends. After all it is possible to enjoy being with someone, talking, or
doing things, without wanting an emotional or sexual commitment.
Boys too get pressures put on them to see all girls as either potential
girlfriends or ‘nothing’ and parents are sometimes the worst
offenders here, making too much out of ‘normal’ friendships – they
need this spelling out to them!
Of course, the best thing about friends is best friends. This book is
full of tributes to them and those of us writing this know how
important they are. You can almost map out your childhood and
adolescence in terms of your best friends and what you did and
talked about and felt. However, we don't want to imply that women
never have problems between themselves. That, of course, is not
true. But somehow these difficulties do seem easier to discuss
openly and overcome, though this doesn't mean that all women
automatically feel warm towards and want to befriend all other
women. Indeed, what attracts’ us to our friends is a mysterious
process which we can't begin to dissect here.
We've talked so far about getting to know your body, your self and
about making friends. We'll go on now to look at alternatives to the
love ‘n’ romance number! Extending honesty to our bodies, our
friendships and love, and generally to relationships with other
people, can be hard, especially when feelings like these are always
changing. Women can also be made to feel guilty about what is seen
as self-cent redness. But this is only because we have been brought
up to believe that only by pleasing others can we ourselves find
fulfilment or happiness. This goes along with the conventional idea of
personal satisfaction through others – husbands, children, and family
– and particularly through the institution of marriage. It's as though
women are meant to be the emotional sponges to soak up other
people's tensions and make them feel good. That's supposed to
make us feel good. No wonder it's so hard for us to assert our
needs, make our demands. We are always scared of hurting
someone. But if we break through that image of ourselves and
demand pleasure for ourselves, demand the right to be taken
seriously, then we are cutting loose from that old idea of passive
femininity. An example! One of us was both flattered and slightly
uneasy about being asked out on a date by a male lecturer. She
recognised the in-built inequality between their roles and didn't want
to be the ‘student’ he happened to ‘fancy’. After discussing it with
friends she rang him up giving an alternative place and time that
suited her. More generally, things like phoning or asking out are
important, they show who is taking the initiative and the more equal
a role girls play in these, the better will they be equipped for a more
equal relationship. And this goes for the external and the internal
dimensions of any ‘romance’.
The way in which boys dominate in their behaviour also repeats
itself in the way they talk. Who, for example, does the most talking?
Who does most of the listening and sympathising? Who states their
opinions most frankly? Is it possible to disagree, have an argument
or discussion from a different position? Do you find you don't know
what you think or feel when you are with him because it depends so
much on him?
Who initiates touching and sex? And who makes their needs felt
more easily? ‘Am I just responding to his needs being the sort of
partner I think he wants, guessing what that is; not beginning or
finishing what I feel because it might make demands on him?’ Sex
tends to be an unquestioned idea. You do it, but it's not clear what
this means. Often it seems to mean satisfying men. But are we
satisfied or do we not dare try to answer that question honestly?
Learning how to initiate and be active sexually with someone else is
difficult, but the benefit of doing so is obvious, we can extend
ourselves physically and emotionally, we can choose to make things
happen. The main point, of course, is that we deserve enjoyment of
our sexuality – everyone does. But it's also true that being honest
about how we feel, admitting it, does mean a more open relationship,
and one based less on dreams or guesswork and more on real
knowledge and feelings about each other.
There are three other questions we want to address ourselves to
in this part of the section. Lesbianism, multiple relationships, and
celibacy. A lesbian is a woman who chooses to have sexual
relationships only with other women. Although some of us writing this
piece do have relationships with women as well as men, none of us
are openly gay with all the social consequences that this involves.
But we do know that people are not just born with a ready-made
sexuality. Because we know that we learn our sexuality and that at
some point women choose to become lesbian, we think it's right to
raise the issue as one we all have to consider.
Lesbianism has been treated variously as a sickness, an
impossibility, or a sin, so our conventional view of it tends to be
negative and fearful. There are no laws against it because many
men don't, or didn't, believe it exists. But women have been loving
each other for centuries, sometimes sexually, sometimes not. This
society expects everyone to be exclusively heterosexual and the
conventional image of the lesbian is of someone who is ugly,
strident, and unhappy. Girls’ magazines sometimes publish letters
from girls who think they may be lesbians, who have sexual feelings
about girl friends or women teachers; the answer is usually along the
lines of that given by Cathy and Claire in Jackie, 17 November 1979:
‘At the moment you do seem to have a crush on Sheila and at your
age that is perfectly natural. Attraction for boys will no doubt come in
time too.’ This attitude says that lesbianism is a phase that many
girls go through and all but the unfortunate few come out into safe
heterosexuality. In fact, it says more about the society that holds this
view than it does about lesbianism itself. If our right to be sexual for
ourselves, to express our sexuality in the way we want to without it
being defined for us in relation to men, is worth fighting for, then
lesbianism must be seen as a positive and possible choice. Lesbian
feelings are not something we should all ignore in the hope that they
will go away and leave us in peace as ‘normal’ women. They can,
instead, make us question our own and everyone else's assumptions
that we are automatically heterosexual for ever and ever.
Apart from this brief comment on lesbianism, the main focus of this
article has been on relationships with boys. But we all know that
initial passionate feelings change. After the first flush of desire is
over, expecting total fulfilment from one person, especially for a long
time, even twenty or thirty years, is unlikely, unrealistic. One way of
coping with this – with the fact that although love and commitment to
someone may grow sexual passion often doesn't – is to attempt to
have relationships with more than one person openly. This means
overcoming possessiveness and jealousy, that is, controlling and
limiting someone else, and taking out your own insecurities on that
person. This is hard, but it is possible; trust can build up as well as
the opportunity of loving people without being smothered or without
smothering. If this is made clear from the start, then a whole career
of ‘problems’ can be, if not solved, at least aired, anticipated and
accepted. At the same time, it is important that no one pushes you
into doing what you don't want. Because men have always had more
freedom to ‘sleep around’, they can find it easier to get into multiple
relationships of this sort and can make women who don't want to feel
guilty. They may have to be forced to discuss their feelings, and
yours. You also need to be able to distinguish between genuine
attempts to be open, and a situation where you're being manipulated
or exploited. And you need to know in yourself whether any
reservations you have are due to valid suspicion or a sort of
conservatism. It's certainly impossible to try sorting this out on your
own, and you need to talk to close women friends about it. While it's
important to try to break down old, restrictive ways of relating to
people, it is crucial not to be exploited.
It is precisely the smothering aspects of romance, wanting
complete access to someone, that can end up its most oppressive
feature. Lovers either think they own you and have the right to
dictate what you can do, or else each partner becomes so
thoroughly familiar with all the idiosyncrasies of the other that there
is no room left for fun or exploration.
All of this doesn't mean you absolutely have to have relationships.
But the availability of the pill and ideas of permissiveness have
encouraged women to have sex, or sexual friendships often when
they don't really want to. Right through their lives women are made
to feel that they must have a man in tow to qualify as socially
acceptable. But choosing to be on your own is not only really
important between relationships, it is also a valid alternative in its
own right. Women who have been in relationships and then choose
to be celibate (i.e. not to have sexual relationships) often find they
feel more in control of their own lives, deciding what to do and when
to do it without immediately wondering how that will affect their
partner. Men can drain off a lot of emotional energy from women and
it can be very positive to be able to use that energy in relationships
in general. In fact, women have been living independently in this way
for years, but it still needs stressing as a viable alternative. That's not
to say there are no problems about being on your own. You can be
made to feel odd or un-sexual and sometimes you can genuinely feel
the need for a close emotional relationship that's also physical. But it
is also possible to be warm and close with friends without
necessarily ‘having sex’ with them, and to enjoy the emotional
contact without any strings being attached. Single, independent
women, for instance, may choose to live alone or with friends, to
have occasional affairs or to have children without combining that
with living with or loving a particular partner. When you are a
teenager you need to feel free to develop your emotional life at your
own pace, without feeling you must have a boyfriend or that you
must have sex and seeing celibacy as a real alternative can take the
pressure off.
These ways of changing are just some of those we have
encountered and there isn't room to talk more about them. At the
end of the chapter we give the names of some other books that
might help. What we want to do, finally, is to point to the things which
make changing your life easier – once again friends, but also
families and the question of ‘free space’.
The first thing is friends. It is really difficult to change the way we
relate without support from women friends. Discussing it all, thinking
it through, talking about what's happened, what we've tried to do,
what others are like, is very important. Girls and women have always
done this, in a way. But if we combine this with the attempt to change
the way we think about, and experience ourselves and other people,
then this can be a real support. We've found that trying to change on
our own is very discouraging and lonely. It can also mean that
(especially if you're challenging, or rejecting, men) you can be
thought weird, a slag, or whatever, even by other women – and you
may come to take on those ideas about yourself out of lack of
support from other people. But if a group of friends are trying to
change together it's different; you don't feel unique or odd. And you
can give each other strength to keep going, or in your turn reject a
boy who can't cope with your demands. It's really good to feel strong
against those ‘normal’ definitions of what's right!
Another thing that helps in this process of change is independent
living conditions. It is hard enough to change – radically anyway, but
it's even harder when surrounded by families, though, of course, it
has been done. Parents often can't believe you're adult, and anyway
they grew up themselves in surroundings where sex may not have
been discussed except as something naughty (i.e. dirty) or clinical
(i.e. clean). If it's possible to live away from home while you're single,
it gives you a right to independence that parents have to accept.
Sharing a house with friends, where each has their own room and
you share kitchen, bathroom, and living-room, for instance, means
both company and independence. The main problem is, of course,
money. Many people don't earn enough to live away from home – in
fact, employers often employ young people, especially women,
exactly because they know they can pay low wages and expect
parents to keep them for a low cost. But then there is the problem of
getting a job at all – in many places this is exceedingly difficult with
current high unemployment.
So it may be impossible to leave home even if you want to. At
least this means you have to face your parents and try to change
them, to some extent. Moving out can mean they don't get directly
challenged, but go on thinking of you in the old way. You can also get
support from, and support, sisters in the family and develop
alternative ideas with them. In the past living at home has often
meant being desperate to get married to get away, which is very
understandable but it does mean escaping one man's house to live
in another's! And the high divorce rate amongst young marrieds
bears ample test to this. It's probably better to leave home and live
with rather than marry someone, that way the same expectations of
permanency, respectability, and probably children, would not be
made, and if the relationship ends, the fuss and expense of divorce
would be avoided and also the over-involvement of parents.
This means, too, that the decision about having children – whether
or when to have them and under what conditions – is made, to some
extent, independently of the decision about who to live with, and the
need to leave home. Sometimes one way of leaving home and
getting married is to become pregnant, but all this amounts to is
escaping one oppressive situation by jumping into another, and this
is certainly unfair to the baby who is being used as a power lever in a
conflict in which it has no power whatsoever. Children, rightly, make
a lot of demands and the decision to have them must take into
account the needs of both mother and child. If living away from home
is kept separate from the question of who to have relationships with,
and when to have children, then these choices, when taken, will be
positive ones. And the presence of children will be more realistically
planned and looked forward to.
There are other problems about changing your way of life.
Families are certainly one and we think you have to decide how long
it is worth going on trying to change them, there may come a point
when it is better if you can just cut your losses and establish an
independent life. On the other hand, some of us have found that our
families, especially our mothers and sisters, give us support and are
willing to understand the way we want to live our lives and even
question their own lives too. Another set of problems stems from the
attitudes of boys. Some boys change easily, others cannot cope at
all, or start taking it out on you. It probably depends partly on how
the women in their families see themselves, and are treated. But of
course, the wider society is sexist, dominated by men and masculine
ideas, and this is reflected in jobs, schools, families, politics,
newspapers, television, films, music. So most boys participate in that
culture, and try to prove themselves ‘men’ in those terms. So you're
likely to find them resistant to ideas of changing; you will need to
have stamina! But most of all you will need to have friends. If your
ideas are not just yours but those of your friends too, boys are in a
much weaker position to ridicule or ignore what you demand. If your
culture is strong enough, they can feel foolish for objecting. It is also
true that boys may ridicule what they don't understand or haven't
coped with between themselves – masculine ‘togetherness’ can be
very threatening and competitive for individual boys. So getting a boy
to understand and support what you're doing may be a long job.
Again this is something that you may have to decide how much
energy it's worth putting into.
Other problems relate to our own ambivalence about changing
ourselves. We may find the struggle tiring, or not be entirely
convinced we are right. Also, of course, our emotions have been
formed over a large number of years, and though we don't believe in
ideas of unchanging ‘human nature’, those emotions at times do feel
pretty fixed. How do we change jealousy, for instance, or timidity?
While we don't wish to deny the strength of these problems, it is true
that support from women friends can help overcome them, or even
prevent them arising. It's best, we've found, to admit them and then
try and change – it's false to pretend to be perfect.
However, despite the problems, we personally feel good about the
changes we have managed to make, and are still trying to make.
This is not because of some abstract ideal, but because we're
learning to be self-determining women who know what we want
(more or less, anyway) and won't subordinate that to what men
might want. We do have a greater sense of personal strength than
we used to, we feel more adult, we have closer relationships with
each other and other people. We're not so interested in doing ‘what's
right’ or ‘what's nice’; we're more interested in being and developing
ourselves, and in changing the possibilities for other women, too.
We're not saying we haven't got problems, but we do know we're
getting stronger!

Some other books to read

Unfortunately, we haven't got enough space to provide a

comprehensive run-down on all those questions usually associated
with sex education or ‘the facts of life’. Instead, we're including a
short list of those books we feel might be most useful. These are as
follows:

Philips, Angela and Rakusen, Jill, eds, Our Bodies Our Selves,
Pelican, 1980. Comprehensive and written in an open friendly tone,
this British version of the original American edition provides an
account of all aspects of our sexual lives, our health and our
relationships. A necessary handbook!
Cousins, Jane, Make it Happy, Virago, 1978. Sub-titled ‘What Sex is
all about’. Especially good on contraception, pregnancy, abortion,
childbirth, health, V.D. and the law.
Hite, Shere, The Hite Report, Summit Books, 1976. This is an
American study of what 3,000 women of all ages said about how
they experienced their sexuality (not what the experts told them they
felt). It's very interesting and shows the importance to women of the
clitoris for sexual pleasure, rather than the vagina.
A NOTE ON LESBIAN SEXUALITY

Trisha McCabe and Sharon K.

Illustrated by Charlotte Tucker

We decided to write a separate piece on lesbian sexuality for two

reasons. First of all, because when people write about sex and
sexuality they usually mean (although they usually don't say so)
heterosexual sex and heterosexuality. The authors of the previous
article are careful not to make this assumption, but nevertheless it
will probably be read in this way. In common sense sex is
heterosexual. Second, it's not possible in our society for different
sexualities to exist side by side in any simple way. Although we know
that a very large percentage of the population is homosexual (some
estimates are at least one in five people) that doesn't mean that
everyone can happily choose whichever sexuality suits them and just
get on with being themselves! Heterosexuality and homosexuality
don't have the same status; our society is dominantly heterosexual
and therefore being heterosexual is seen as normal. So what does
that make us?
For lesbians, the position is even worse than for gay men. Some
people even doubt whether we exist! We're surrounded by a culture
– the mass media, education (and, of course, ‘sex’ education),
families, social life – which is exclusively heterosexual. We all
understand heterosexuality, it's not something we learn about in a
formal way, it's just ‘there’, normal, obvious. We're not supposed to
question it, to make a choice about our sexuality; we're not even
supposed to have a choice! You just are heterosexual – at least until
you prove otherwise. Innocent until proved guilty?
 Being a lesbian is seen as a problem. Being heterosexual isn't.
The preceding chapter questions what sexuality is, makes romance
and sex a problematic area of our lives, something to think about,
question, choose. It makes a nice change from only gay sexuality
being seen as a problem, but isn't it funny how, on the whole,
heterosexuality is something people have problems with but
homosexuality and lesbianism are problems in themselves, problems
per se.
Young women who have never had sexual experiences are
assumed to be heterosexual. You don't actually have to do anything
to be heterosexual. Even if you've never done it, you know what ‘it’
is; everyone, gay or straight, more or less understands what
heterosexual sex involves, if only in its most stereotyped form. But
how many heterosexual women understand lesbians? And why not?
It seems odd to us, considering that women obviously have the
capacity to understand other women's emotional and sexual needs.
Otherwise, how on earth do we ever figure out our own? If we don't
feel comfortable with our own bodies it's because we're taught to be
sexual only for men, not for ourselves or other women. Which may
be why so many women ask what do lesbians do in bed? No one
ever asks what heterosexuals do in bed!
 The only explanation we can come up with for this odd
phenomenon – odd because how on earth do girls know what male
sexuality is about and yet know next to nothing about female
sexuality – is that all that everything, and everyone, from school
books and teachers to magazines and workmates, ever talks about
is heterosexual sex.
Given that most young women don't know much about lesbian
sexuality, and yet seem frightened of or disgusted by this thing they
don't understand, we thought that the best thing to do was to write a
piece each about our own experience and ideas. They're very
different in some ways – but then, contrary to popular opinion, we're
not all the same, though we share similar problems. Just like
heterosexual women.

Sharon – one young lesbian's experience1

Many heterosexual women tend to think that lesbians are ‘dirty’. I

have found this in my working and social life; whenever a lesbian is
mentioned in conversation, the majority of women seem to be
disgusted with the thought of it. You can't really blame them, though,
as society in all aspects has made them think this way.
Things can be very difficult for lesbians – in my job I have to lie
about my social life. I have to use men's names to disguise those of
women because if I were to say I was having a relationship with a
woman the majority of the people I work with would just freak out. I
find it extremely hard as I have to think every time I speak. I get so
scared that something will slip out one day at work and the outcome
would be unbearable to think about. I could just imagine all the girls I
work with – they would just find me disgusting and even if I tried to
explain it would make no difference. As exaggerated as this account
may sound, it is completely true.
My family life is just the same and I feel awful about hiding my true
identity from my parents. They are divorced and I live with my father,
who I have a very loving relationship with and would not like to hurt.
Telling my dad just could never be as I know he wouldn't understand
and therefore it would really hurt him. I did feel that maybe because I
lived away from my mother I could approach her; I knew I had to
confide in one of my parents. My mother being more open-minded, I
thought it would work. I approached her very coolly. She was going
on, as mothers do, about me settling down and getting myself a nice
boyfriend so I just said, ‘Mom, I'm gay’. At first it didn't sink in so I
said it again.
‘Do you sleep with women?’ ‘Have you ever been in love with a
woman?’ These were the sort of questions she threw at me. I felt so
humiliated. If I was heterosexual and said, ‘Mom, I'm going out with a
fella’ there would be no questions about my sex life. I am still the
same person whether I'm gay or heterosexual. I just lost all my
confidence and went to bed and cried myself to sleep. The next day I
was so afraid to face my mother; we went shopping and the way I
reacted was so stupid! When we went into a shop I was scared to
look at a woman in case she thought I fancied her. Scared to look at
a newspaper in case she thought I was eyeing up women. Then later
came the accusations I knew she was going to throw at me.
‘It's my fault, you're from a broken home.’ ‘You need a psychiatrist,
you've been hurt by someone in the past.’ I was so hurt; she made
me feel as if there was something mentally wrong with me. I was so
scared that she would bump into my dad because I was sure she
would tell him, so I gave her some silly story about a phase I had
gone through and now I was going out with a boy and everything
was all right. Which brought me back to square one.
From this it may seem that lesbians have a rough time, but we
have a wonderful time too. Maybe if I were older the situation with
my parents wouldn't be so terrifying. Being a teenager I tend to feel
less secure, maybe because I do not have much money and I rely on
my father in more ways than one. But since I have come out of
myself more I have met a lot of other lesbian women who are really
great. We get on so well and have a really good time. If any of my
friends or I have emotional or domestic problems we talk to each
other and it is so nice to have people who are the same as me who
are sincere and caring. I always feel a lot better once I've talked to
them. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, I have many straight
friends too, but how can I talk to them about things when they either
don't know I'm gay or, being straight, they can't really see the
problems we face as lesbians?
I found, even before I let myself admit I was gay, that going out
with my straight friends was too heterosexual for me; they, like
everyone else, assumed that everyone is heterosexual. I remember
when I was seventeen, my friends used to go on about their
boyfriends and I really wanted to tell my best friend that I was gay
because I was so confused about what I could do. I knew about
things like Gay Switchboard, but I didn't have the guts to contact
them. So I told her I had a friend who was gay and she didn't know
what to do. My friend totally ignored what I said, so I just forgot it.
In contrast, with the lesbian women I know we go out in groups, as
well as with lovers, and this makes me feel good because I can be
myself and that's what it's all about.
Many people say ‘what do you get from a woman?’ You cannot
explain this, you just know. Being a woman I know what another
woman is like and likes, emotionally and physically. Women are a lot
more loving than men, in my experience. I can say this quite
honestly; when I have slept with a man I felt like some sex object.
They seemed to have no interest in how you feel, they are always
passing comment about women's bodies, and what they would like
to do to them. As long as a man reaches his climax it does not
matter how a woman feels. Many women who are heterosexual may
find this absurd. If they enjoy sleeping with men, maybe they have
found one who isn't as bad as that!
One thing that really annoys me about straight women is that they
tend to think that if you're a lesbian you're going to attack them or
something. This is obviously not true. We have our likes and dislikes
too – just because a woman is heterosexual, no one thinks she's
going to go round jumping on every man she sees! Really, when
people think that they're saying that we are going to behave like
men, just because we're lesbians! As for men, how many of them get
off on just the idea of women together? They feel that even when we
say we're lesbian we still belong to them. This is not true; we care
about women, and we only belong to ourselves.

Trisha – different yet the same

Sharon's experience is in ways very different from mine. And in

some ways the same. I'm older than her so maybe taken more
seriously, though sometimes I'm not so sure; people still think I might
‘grow out of it’. I've also lived away from home for several years,
which I think helps in the sense that my parents accept that my life is
my own and they won't interfere. I do have problems at work where,
in lots of situations, it's impossible to come out as a lesbian because
people would be horrified. Especially when working with young
people, all gay people have to counter the suspicion that they are out
to corrupt those young people. Yet heterosexual workers aren't
assumed to be sexually interested in young people of the opposite
sex. This is another version of the ‘watch out or they'll jump on you’
theory. I do get support from my mother and sisters in particular, and
my family's acceptance of my sexuality is very important to me. In
many ways it makes up for the prejudice and ignorance I encounter
in other people. I feel that my family has accepted my choices in
every area of my life, and so have responded to my lesbianism in a
relatively positive way. Big issues can be resolved, in my experience,
if you and your family have achieved mutual respect. But being able
to be myself with my family is different from the experience of most
lesbians I know, so I think I'm very lucky.
But the point that we both want to stress is that our lesbianism isn't
a problem to us, we see it as a very positive thing about ourselves
and feel strongly that lesbianism and homosexuality should be
presented to young people (and older ones) as viable forms of
sexuality. The problem is actually other people, and society's
attitudes in general, not us.
At the same time, we hope it's clear that lesbians aren't all the
same, and have different experiences. My views are personal to me,
and while my experience as a lesbian is obviously similar to other
women, I don't expect every lesbian to agree with what I say, or feel
exactly the same way I do. Our sexuality isn't the only thing that
defines us; straight people seem to find this difficult to understand.
They tend to have very stereotyped ideas about what ‘a lesbian’ is
and forget that lesbians are secretaries, shop assistants, teachers,
social workers, students, factory workers, not to mention being
mothers or grandmothers, doing the shopping at the local
supermarket, cooking the tea or delivering your post. Everywhere
and everything, in fact. The problem is that women are defined in
relation to sexuality: the most important thing you can know about
anyone in our society is whether they're male or female. But if you
don't fit into society's expectations of what women are – interested in
men, marriage, etc. and available to men – then you're expected to
be completely different from everyone else. Gay people are often
treated as if we're a separate species!
This is clearest in the issue of lesbian mothers. Some people
actually see being a lesbian and a mother as a contradiction – as if
lesbians are so completely different from other women they can't
possibly be interested in, have, want or care about children. But it's
also to do with the idea that we are just ‘born that way’ (so everyone
else is just ‘born normal’?). Many women do go through
heterosexual experiences, marriage or motherhood before
discovering their lesbianism and choosing to relate sexually to
women. Others choose to have children and bring them up with
other women. Importantly, lesbian mothers often lose their children
simply because they're lesbians. Their sexuality is seen as
disqualifying them from motherhood (you didn't know there was a
sexual ‘means test’ for mothers, did you?).
But having said that our sexuality isn't a total definition of us as
people, I also have to say that being a lesbian is one of the things I
like most about myself. It's linked to every area of my life; I don't stop
being a lesbian when I get out of bed and go to work, shopping, or
anything else. I don't put up with men making demands on me, or
comments about me, because I don't have to put up with it at home.
I don't just prioritise women sexually, but in every other way too.
Being a lesbian is a whole way of life for me, it doesn't stop or start.
Sexual relationships are part of that life, not separate from it. Lovers
are friends and sometimes friends are more important than lovers.
What is sex anyway? It's not something concentrated in your
genitals that bursts out every so often, it's not something reserved
for after dark in the privacy of your own home! Your sexuality is part
of you, and sexuality can be part of a relationship, but it's not
separate and it's not everything.
Being a lesbian to me means that I can be independent, no one
can tell me what to do, I make my own decisions. It also means
caring for other women, liking women, loving women. To do that I
have to like myself. You don't often hear women say what they like
about themselves, it's always what they don't like; which bits are the
‘wrong’ shape, what doesn't look right, what we do wrong. It sounds
big-headed to say that you like yourself, but I don't really care;
women should be big-headed, we're nice people! Women have a lot
of strengths and I've only found out about some of them since I
came out. Not having to put someone else first all the time means
that you have the space to find out things about yourself – the bad
and the good. I've stopped putting myself down so I don't like anyone
else doing it to me. And lesbians are put down a lot. We've tried to
counteract some of that prejudice, but this note is very limited. It
would take more than a whole book! Why do heterosexual people
feel so outraged at the mention of lesbianism? Why do they feel
threatened, insecure, moralistic? What is so terrible about saying
there is an alternative sexuality to theirs? What's so wrong about
having a choice? Maybe the people who read this book, the
teachers, parents, and the girls, will welcome this opportunity to raise
the issue, are genuinely concerned about young gay people, won't
bat an eyelid. Maybe pigs will fly.

We know that a woman does not need to have a man. We know

that a child does not need to have a father. We know that no
one needs to have the same lover for the rest of their life. . . .
We know we don't have to make love unless we want to. We
know our lovers because we know ourselves. We know that we
can and will understand and control our own bodies. We know
that most of what we've been told about sex and about women
is a tissue of lies. We know we're not freaks. We know we're
beautiful, sensitive, sensual and womanly. We know that women
have always loved women, and that we'll go on doing it for ever.
Angela Stewart-Park and Jules Cassidy We're Here.
Conversations with lesbian women, (Quartet Books, 1977)

NOTE
1 Sharon can't use her full name here, because the risk to her job and her family life would
be too great. A heterosexual teenager would be able to take the full credit for her work.
10 Learning to be a girl:
girls, schools and the work of the
Sheffield Education Group
Anne Strong

I have been working with Sheffield Women and Education group

since 1977, and during that time we have done various talks,
organised a travelling exhibition and written a pamphlet. We are also
writing non-sexist children's books with funding from the Equal
Opportunities commission. I teach in further education and have
practical experience in trying to teach sixteen-year-old apprentices
the basics of women's studies! I also teach groups of girls. This
chapter is based in part on my research into sex roles in children's
literature. It is also linked to my experience as an active feminist and
socialist.

Until recently, very little was written about how girls fare in our
education system, what they learn in schools, and how they are
treated differently, and generally do less well in schools than boys.
The issue of class and schooling has been raised, Paul Willis's work
(Learning to Labour, 1977), analysed the way in which working-class
pupils (in his study they were all boys) have limited expectations and
job choice because they are working-class. The boys themselves felt
that the school regarded them differently, they complained that the
careers advice which the middle-class boys received was different
as they would eventually go on to college, whereas they the working-
class boys were destined for the local factory. In our society being
born into a working class or a. middle class background has a great
effect on future job chances and lifestyle.
However, another important factor – that of being male or female,
has until recently been overlooked. Education for girls has always
been seen differently from that of boys; it has been argued that girls
need a different education from boys as the boys would eventually
go on to become the breadwinners whereas the girls would in most
cases, go on to run a home and look after a family. Girls therefore
did not need as long or as good an education as boys. These
arguments still apply today in many cases, despite the fact that many
women are now equal or sole wage earners in their families. Recent
high unemployment has led to calls for married women to give up
their jobs to unemployed men who, it is felt, ‘need’ them more. These
notions about women's work being secondary are still found in many
areas of education as this chapter will later show. Other arguments
which have been used in the past against educating girls have
focused on ‘women's nature’ – it was felt that too much mental
stimulation was bad for girls’ health, and subjects such as maths and
physics were too taxing for a girl's brain.
 Sheffield Women and Education group are one of the groups
throughout the country who are concerned with the education girls
receive. Since 1976 we have been looking at different areas of
education from a girl's point of view. We have looked at careers
advice, subject choice, and other areas, finding out why girls in
general do less well academically, and how the school reinforces
ideas of male and female behaviour. In the way that Paul Willis
pointed out that being working-class affected educational success,
we wanted to show that being a girl also meant losing out in
education. Some of our work has been concerned with making the
links between sex, race and class, e.g. middle-class girls do better
than working-class girls in general, and black girls tend to do less
well than both. Classroom practice – what is actually taught to girls in
schools, and how it is taught – has also been important for us. We
are not only concerned with the subjects taught to girls, but the way
in which the classroom operates to present girls with a picture of
what a typical girl or a typical boy is. We refer to this as the ‘hidden
curriculum’ – the school not only teaches girls formal subjects but
behaviour as well – how to be female.
We know that education does not exist separately from the other
institutions in our society that teach us how to be female – girls are
very much influenced by families, friends, magazines and television.
Similarly the jobs and roles girls are channelled towards are a result
of the economic and political system we live under – until we change
a capitalist society that needs women to do free child-care and
housework and low paid jobs then we are only scratching the
surface. There are important things that we can do to help make
things better for girls now, and a list of suggestions for action
appears at the end of this article.
The work we have done has been with parents, teachers and girls
themselves. We have written and produced a pamphlet and written
articles for magazines outlining our ideas. Local radio has also been
useful for publicising meetings and conferences which we have held.
Through girls themselves, parents and teaching unions, we have put
together a picture of what schooling for girls is like today, and how it
is changing.
What school used to be like?

We try to educate girls into becoming imitation men and as a result

we are wasting and frustrating their qualities of womanhood at
great expense to the community,........ in addition to their needs as
individuals our girls should be educated in terms of their main
social function which is to make for themselves, their children and
their husbands a secure and comfortable home and to be mothers.
(Newsom Report, 1963)

Newsom wrote these remarks almost twenty years ago so maybe we

ought to presume that things have changed. Certainly the history of
education shows that the main idea was that girls were to be good
wives and mothers. In fact, the entry of girls into full-time state
education has been relatively recent. Before the 1870 Education Act
made schooling available and compulsory for all children up to the
age of ten years, schooling was done on a voluntary basis. This
meant that most middle-class boys attended their public schools or
had tutors, some middle-class girls attended boarding school or had
governesses and most working-class children had little or no formal
education at all. The kinds of tutoring that middle-class girls had was
often more aimed at preparing them to be suitable ‘catches’ for some
young man rather than being designed to further their knowledge. A
girl was still not considered to need to know very much about the
world, unless it was the world of decorum or household
management. Many working-class children went to the local Sunday
school as their only form of education, which was more concerned
with teaching them how to behave and instilling ‘morals’ into them
than actual knowledge. After all, they wouldn't use any real
education anyway as the boys were destined for the factories in
many cases and the girls the factories or shops and eventually the
home.
Girls’ education has been said to be dependent on three things;
their social class, the demand for labour, and the prevailing notions
of ‘femininity’ – what it is to be a girl. Rosemary Deem says that it
wasn't the realisation that girls were entitled to an education that led
to Acts such as the 1870 one, but rather that changes in the
economy made it necessary for there to be a larger and better
educated labour force. It was the new capitalist employers, e.g. the
mill-owners in the North, who felt that education would provide a
better and more reliable workforce. Girls of the working class weren't
seen as delicate flowers like their middle-class sisters when it came
to them working at the mill; the same notions of frail womanhood
were lost in the need for profit.
So although the 1870 Act did provide formal access to school for
girls, they didn't really benefit by it in large numbers. Some working-
class girls were needed in the home, either to work in some form of
home industry or to look after smaller children while their parents
both worked. Many parents couldn't see the point of their girls being
educated; they were never going to use it after all! They need not
have worried; in fact, the education that most girls received at the
time was much more centred on domestic tasks than on the arts or
sciences. Suitable subjects for middle-class girls may have included
‘a little French’ or ‘the arts’ (nothing too taxing), but for working-class
girls the emphasis was very much on how to run an efficient and
frugal home. This idea that the home was the girl's future was
summed up by Elizabeth Sewell in 1865 when she said that ‘the aim
of education is to fit the child for the position in life which they are
hereafter to occupy. Boys are to be sent out into the world, to mingle
with the bad and the good, to govern and direct. The school is the
type of life they are hereafter to lead. Girls are to dwell in quiet
homes, to exercise a noiseless influence, to be submissive and
retiring.’
But in an age of mass poverty and overcrowding working-class
girls found it difficult to live up to this shrinking violet image. None the
less, they were still expected to benefit from this new education by
learning how to provide a neat and tidy home, a home which would
entice the menfolk away from the evils of the public house. Because
of this, housecraft and needlework formed the main part of their
education. Grants were given to schools to provide these courses for
girls to do. The idea that girls might study the arts or languages was
still seen as a waste of time.
The Hadow Report of 1926 even suggests that it was only the
influence of girls in their home and family that kept the nation
together. ‘They [girls] should be shown that on the efficient care and
management of the home depend the health, happiness and
prosperity of the nation.’ Elizabeth Sewell was convinced that the
sorts of subjects that boys were beginning to do wouldn't possibly do
for girls. She stated that, Her health would break down under the
effort, and health is the obstacle which even under the most
favourable circumstances must stand in the way of a girl acquiring
the intellectual strength which at this age is so invaluable to a boy.’
Again this argument applied to middle-class girls more than
working-class girls; compulsory education for girls often meant them
doing housecraft at school as well as at home in the evening. The
argument about girls’ health is interesting as it is still used in many
cases today. Girls’ periods are often cited as the reason why girls
behave in certain ways ‘at certains times of the month’. They might
be more clumsy at that time in the lab, or just moody and absent-
minded in class. A ‘Family Circle’ booklet called For Growing Boys
contains a picture of a school room with a girl as the central
character staring into space and looking decidedly glum, the boy is
told that this is due to her period which may make her ‘uncomfortable
or a little moody’ – not conducive to good school work.
The argument that girls weren't capable of hard work, was in fact
proved wrong by the school itself. Sue Sharpe points out that the
report on the ‘Difference in curricula between the sexes in secondary
school’ noted the overpressure of work on girls by physical and
mental strain – the amount of housecraft they did at school was often
phenomenal. The report also noted the strain on women teachers
actually teaching the subjects.
At the beginning of the First World War, then, the education of girls
was still based to a large extent on their future roles as housewives
and mothers. But changes were beginning to occur, particularly in
the field of higher education for girls. The advent of the war was a
turning point for women in that they were needed to enter the
hitherto male world of work. They only entered the war work late in
the day and were often under the supervision of men, but it did
represent for some women the move away from a career in the
home. In the early 1920s middle-class girls began to have more
scope in the world of paid work, entering professions such as
teaching, secretarial work and nursing. This led to demands for a
fairer deal in the education system for girls and young women. The
following is a quote from a book written about fiction in the two world
wars which shows the new life many middle-class girls were
beginning to lead. Rosalie, the character has been to boarding
school and now:

She's left the school! She's living in a splendid house in Pilchester

Square looking for a post!
She's found a post! She's private secretary to Mr Simcox!
She's left the splendid house in Pilchester Square! She's living an
independent life! She's going to Mr Simcox's office, HER office,
every day, just like a man! She's living on her own salary in a
boarding house in Bayswater!

Unfortunately, Rosalie is from then on depicted as changing her

character due to work, she becomes embittered, but then the idea
was still very strong that women might not after all find true
happiness in work. That was to be found in marriage. Very few
women were encouraged to view their lives in terms of
independence and a career. Education still laid official emphasis on
girls’ future training as wives and mothers.
Education reports well into this century have stressed the ‘need’
for girls’ education to be linked to the home and the family
particularly at times when the national economy is in a crisis or
slump. After the Second World War, when again women had worked
in large numbers, came a re-emergence of all the old theories of
maternal deprivation. Women going out to work, it was (and still is)
argued, would lead to their children growing up unstable, neurotic
and goodness knows what else. Housework must be seen by
women as an important job, one that could benefit the country and
ensure healthy, happy children.
In the Education of Girls (1948), John Newsom argued that girls
who were unenthusiastic about housework needed all the more a
good domestic education to make them aware how important that
work was. He argued that the economy needed the education of girls
to be based on the home, after all they do this well and shouldn't
regard this unpaid and low status work as inferior to men's work.
The ideas of Newsom and others then provided the basis on which
education for girls entered the period of the 1960s. The introduction
of the comprehensive system was meant to reduce inequalities in
the school system by offering equal access to good state education
for all. But if we actually look at the education of most girls today, do
they get their equal share of access to subjects, equipment and
resources? Do girls get as good a deal out of the system as boys?

Girls and schooling today

Reforms such as the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 have, it is

argued, opened the path to equality for women. The Act has the
capacity to cover the area of education, if girls are discriminated
against in the school system then they can make a case under the
Act. Even if we accept that the Act may provide formal equality for
girls within the system, the fact remains that girls still do different
subjects from boys and still do less well academically in general.
Research carried out into subject choice shows that strict ideas on
‘girls’ ’ and ‘boys’ ’ subjects still exists. It is also presumed that girls’
interests within a subject will be different from boys’. As a Sheffield
history teacher remarked to his mixed class, ‘This year's course
should have something to interest everyone as it has battles and
wars for the boys, and dress and food for the girls.’
A quote from Spare Rib also outlines this feeling that girls’
interests will be different, ‘In an art lesson once the (female) teacher
said “Today we are going to draw aeroplanes. The ladies (sic) may
like to draw birds instead.” I drew an aeroplane.’ The ideas behind
those statements – the reasons why the teachers felt that girls and
boys would have different interests is what I want to deal with next.
To do this, the whole way in which girls are taught in schools, from
primary to further education, needs to be looked at. As this book is
aimed at older pupils, many of the examples from primary school
may no longer seem important, but they are part of the way in which
the total education system, right from the start teaches girls to be
girls. I'm sure they are still probably familiar to most of us; they still
are to me.

Primary school

By the time children enter the school at the age of five they have
already begun to learn appropriate behaviour for their sex from their
parents, grandparents, etc. Can you remember being told ‘It's not
ladylike to climb on things’ or ‘Don't mess up that dress, sit quietly’
while the boys in the family were told ‘Big boys don't cry’ or ‘Boys
don't play with dolls’? Parents have ideas of what a ‘real lad’ or ‘a
proper little lady’ is. Girls are allowed to be tomboys while they are
young, but boys aren't really allowed to be ‘cissies.’ When the child
gets to school they may find that the teachers too treat boys and girls
very differently. There are still some schools whose structure
differentiates between boys and girls, e.g. separate boys’ and girls’
playgrounds. We were told of one school where the divide was a
painted yellow line across the yard which the children crossed at
their peril! Teachers will say that girls and boys don't want to play
together, or boys play too ‘rough’ for the little girls. Can you
remember ‘boys’ tables’ and ‘girls’ tables’ in the classroom?
Teachers will point out that it is difficult to get the boys and girls to sit
together, but this is understandable when a favourite threat to boys
who are misbehaving is ‘I'll sit you with the girls.’ A fate worse than
death apparently!
Another area in the primary school that is often sex-typed is, in
fact, play. Play forms a large part of children's lives when they are
young; they are learning how to play roles. So what roles do girls
learn in the primary school? Teachers will expect boys and girls to
play with certain toys and become worried if they don't. How many
teachers are happy to let their small boys dress up in frocks from the
dressing-up box, to play with the dolls or the Wendy House? Yet
small boys often do like to dress up, and why shouldn't they learn
how to ‘hold baby.’ If we examine the advertising for toys, they are
certainly sold as sex-specific toys. ‘Boys’ ’ toys are the guns, boats,
trains, building toysets. Girls’ toys are the dolls’ prams, paints,
cookery sets, etc. At Christmas in many infant schools the toys from
Santa’ are wrapped in blue and pink paper to ensure that no girl gets
a gun or no boy gets a bracelet! It is presumed that boys and girls at
play are interested in totally different things. If a girl or boy steps over
the line, it may be cause for concern; why should a boy be interested
in a dolly and the dressing-up box unless something is ‘wrong’?
Similar patterns can be traced right through primary education.
The infant school schemes most widely used are the ones that
depict the boys playing with friends, climbing, riding a bike, making
decisions, telling little sister what to do, and playing at being ‘daddy’.
The ‘little’ sister on the other hand is told what to do, rides a small
bike, plays with dolls, prams, in the Wendy house making tea for
brother and his friends and playing at being ‘mummy’. Mothers and
fathers in the schemes are also shown in traditional men's and
women's roles. Dad goes out to work, drives a car, does the garden,
makes decisions and reads the paper. Mum on the other hand is
shown as a housewife, making beds, cleaning, cooking, looking after
the children and the house.
These images are not even a true reflection of society. Many
women do go out to work, do drive cars, dig the garden and make
decisions, all these are not only done by men. Some men do look
after children and do the shopping, but not in most reading schemes.
In One, two, three and away the boys are engaged in an adventure
in a boat which sails off down the river. The girl, Jennifer, appears
only briefly in the story, and then only as a spectator, she takes no
active part in the adventure or the rescue. It simply says ‘Jennifer
was with them.’ On many occasions in reading schemes the girls are
shown as passively watching the boys, following their lead.
A reading scheme in common use in schools is ‘Ladybird’. They
have actually of late begun to look at their books and produce less
stereotyped images which needs encouraging. Unfortunately, their
actual learning to read scheme is guilty of very stereotyped images
of women and girls. Here is a quote from the scheme. ‘Jane likes to
help mummy. She wants to make cakes like mummy. “Yes I will be
mummy and get the tea” says Jane. “I like to get the tea.” Peter
helps Daddy to make a big fire. “I like this work” says Peter.’

‘I'm not having girls in my metalwork room’: girls in secondary

education

Some schools have a common curriculum up until the end of the

second or third year. Before this everyone does science, cookery,
etc. But even in schools that have this common approach the picture
changes when it comes to exam subject choice. The fact that
teachers share certain assumptions about male and female roles
does mean that they will encourage girls and boys to do particular
subjects.
Work done by women in Manchester pointed out that the whole
image of a scientist for example is seen as the wrong image for girls:
‘For adolescent girls, anxious to be recognised as feminine, the
image of the scientist is unlikely to be appealing as it conflicts with
society's ideal of womanhood.’ What they mean is that the scientist
is supposed to be cold and realistic, whereas girls are supposed to
be more emotional and led by feelings.
Many schools do offer all subjects now to girls and boys to comply
with the law, but there are still all sorts of pressures on girls to do
traditional subjects, not least that they want a job at the end of it.
After all, secretarial subjects are still more likely to get a girl a job at
the moment than technical subjects where jobs are short.
Eileen Byrne has produced figures that show that while schools
offer subjects to both sexes, barriers do deter girls and boys from
doing non-traditional things. For example, Department of Education
and Science statistics showed that in the case of physics in
secondary school the figures were as follows:

Percentage of pupils being offered access to subject

Single-sex
Mixed schools
schools
Boys Girls Boys Girls
Physics 85 62 91 75

while the percentage of pupils actually taking the subject was much
lower for girls.

Percentage actually taking subject

Single-sex
Mixed schools
schools
Boys Girls Boys Girls
Physics 51 14 47 11

It isn't enough, then, for schools to offer formal equality; positive

discrimination to get girls to do ‘boys’ subjects’ is needed as well as
lots of support from sympathetic and feminist teachers.

Girls and further education

An article in Spare Rib recently also pointed out that even when girls
do manage to make it to college or university they are still treated
differently from the men. Many complained of the patronising
attitudes of the male tutors who still didn't feel that the ‘girls” work
was on a par with the ‘men's’ even though they had the same
qualifications.
 Similarly girls who go on after school to technical or further
education college will find that the attitudes they came across at
school still apply there. In further education or technical colleges,
girls still predominate in catering or secretarial work, whilst most of
the engineers are boys. In my technical college some floors, i.e. the
engineering and science departments, only have men's toilets on
them while other floors, i.e. business studies and catering, only have
girls’ toilets on them.
Girls who decide to do apprenticeships at technical colleges find
that the attitudes of most male teachers (or lecturers) are far from
encouraging. They may well find themselves the only girl on the
course, which presents problems. A girl painting/decorating
apprentice in a further education college in South Yorkshire said,
‘Well it's hard, you have to do things better than them, if I do
something wrong, you know, mess something up, then I think they'll
laugh at me, I think it's because I'm a girl.’ This feeling that in order
to do well the girls had to be careful all the time was very strong. Any
mistakes by the boys were just mistakes any one could make, but if
a girl did it, then it was further proof that girls couldn't really cope
with it.

Sheffield Women's Film Co-op

Sheffield Women's Film Co-op have produced a film about a girl who
wants to be a motor mechanic. The film deals with the problems ‘Pat’
has, with the careers teacher and advisor who is helpful but
eventually persuades Pat to take a job in the ‘Parts’ Department,
rather than a garage workshop. The film shows the reactions of Pat's
dad ‘That's no job for a girl’ and mum, and the reactions of her
friends ‘You wont be able to wear nail polish’ and ‘Tha'll get all muck
down finger nails’ being typical. In fact, her friends think the pay must
be ‘dead good’ to induce Pat to do it. No one really understands why
a good-looking girl like Pat wants a dirty job like that. In the end Pat
does give in, no one will give her an apprenticeship so she does end
up working in Parts behind the garage giving out exhaust pipes, etc.
to the mechanics. Not really what Pat originally wanted.
What can we do about it?

Sheffield Women and Education have been working around ways of

emphasising the role of girls in education and doing something about
it. The growth of the Women's Liberation Movement over the past
ten years has made ideas of women's equality more public, and
some progress has been made. It's not only a question of differences
in girls’ and boys’ education. The education of middle-class girls,
especially in private education, is still very different from that which
working-class girls are offered. In general their job choice is wider
and more will go on to further education. Often the facilities at
middle-class schools are better – this raises the question of single
sex education. Some feminists argue that girls do better in girls’
schools. Certainly, in my single-sex school girls doing well in science
was seen as normal, as there were no boys to compare with, or to
provide the idea that it wasn't really for girls. But do they solve the
problem? Perhaps a better solution is to suggest single sex provision
in subjects for girls/boys new to the academic area.
Another distinction needs to be made between black and white
girls at school. Recent reports have pointed out the differences
between black and white pupils’ achievements and certainly black
girls do less well in the academic and job market than white. The
whole question of sex is bound up with class society and yet it is
impossible to completely solve it purely within the terms of class. We
need a total change in society to resolve all these inequalities. But
there are positive things to be done. Here are some of the
suggestions from Sheffield Women and Education.

What teachers can do

1 Raise the issue in the unions.

2 Make changes in lessons and at school.
3 Organise women teachers’ groups – it's difficult to make changes
on your own.

What girls can do

1 Organise a girls’ group – the same thing applies.
2 Complain to teachers about their language and attitudes –
preferably as a group!
3 Invite speakers in to put a different point of view – Spare Rib
often has ideas, and so have local women's groups.
4 Use what literature, magazines, films, etc. you can get hold of –
such as the Sheffield Women and Film Co-op's Jobs for the Girls or
‘Building your Future’ video by Women in Manual Trades, if you don't
get good careers advice. Make them sit up and listen!

Useful contacts

1 Spare Rib: monthly women's liberation magazine, 27, Clerkenwell

Close, London, EC1.
2 Sheffield Women's Film Co-op: for Jobs for the Girls – available
for schools to hire; c/o 34, Psalter Lane, Sheffield, S11.
3 Women in Manual Trades: helpful for girls intending to do non-
traditional jobs. South of England: c/o Jessica Datta, 40, Dale St,
London, W4. North of England: c/o Tess McMahon, 51, Hirst St,
Burnley, Lancs. Scotland: c/o Joan McLelland, 20, Stanley Rd, New-
haven, Edinburgh.
4 Young Women's Magazine Group: c/o Paula Frampton, 4, Essex
Rd, London W3.
5 G.I.S.T. – Girls into Science and Technology: c/o 9a, Didsbury
Park, Didsbury, Manchester.
6 C.A.S.S.O.E. – Campaign Against Sexism and Sexual Oppression
in Education: c/o Liz Wynton, 17, Lymington Rd, London, NW6.
7 Women and Education Newsletter: c/o 14, St. Brendans Rd,
Manchester, 20.
And last but not least:
8 Sheffield Women and Education: c/o 29, Parkers Rd, Sheffield
10.
11 Working with girls:
write a song and make a record about it!1
Monika Savier
Translated by Patricia Harbord

In West Germany as in England, feminist youth work with girls is a

relatively new field. The following article portrays the practical and
the political problems of setting up a girls’ group in a youth club (in
this case in West Berlin). The author MONIKA SAVIER has been
working on girls’ projects for several years and has written many
articles on this subject. I have translated the article in order to add an
international perspective to this book. I have been involved in youth
work in West Germany as a vacation job and am at present about to
begin an MA in European Cultural History at the University of
Warwick.
Patricia Harbord

Tina Müller emptied her pigeon-hole in the office, tore the label with
her name on it from the edge of the shelf – she couldn't remove the
feminist symbol which the girls had scribbled next to it in biro – then
she picked up her guitar, which stood in the corner, and moved
towards Hans, who was sitting watching her. She handed over her
keys and said, ‘I learnt a lot from your mistakes, so really I ought to
be grateful to you. So long!’
She had worked in this youth club for two years. At first she had
been a probationer, and afterwards she had stayed on because a
permanent full-time post for a youth-worker had become vacant, and
she got on well with the men and women who were her colleagues.
When, at the end of her probationary training period in the youth
club, she decided to accept the post as a youth worker, she
announced quite spontaneously during the final discussion with the
team that in future she wanted to concern herself more with the
problems of the girls at the club. She met with no opposition
whatsoever from the team of youth workers – on the contrary, her
colleagues, both male and female, all declared themselves well-
disposed towards the idea. But one of the women in the team said,
‘I've been thinking about that, too, but I didn't expect you, of all
people, to bring it up before I did!’ Tina Müller was startled; she
hadn't wanted to compete with this woman and had the feeling that
this was a bad start for a girls’ group.

Photograph by
Pam Bloor

In the following week Tina Müller began to rush about like a

whirlwind. She got out her address book and leafed through it to find
the addresses of women she knew from her training course or from
women's bars and who she imagined might already have given
some thought to the problems of doing youth work with girls. She
made phone calls and appointments, was given tips about what she
could read and began to realise how naively she had set out into this
field. Gradually she began to sense that she had to sort out for
herself just what she was hoping to achieve, and that she had to
prove to the team that she could ‘succeed’ in establishing some kind
of rapport with the girls. She realised that this thing she had just
started out on had a great deal to do with her as a person, and that it
was going to demand greater emotional involvement on her part.
Full of determination, Tina had ‘working with girls’ put on the
agenda at the next meeting of the team. ‘Is it a quick one, can we
deal with it under “organisational”?’ asked Heiner, whose turn it was
to take the minutes.
Tina was startled. Though she knew she couldn't say very much
about it yet, the girls’ group really wasn't an organisational problem.
She gulped. Heiner just sat back and waited. ‘Hey, I wasn't trying to
reduce your problem to a question of organisation, Tina,’ said Heiner
amicably. Tina couldn't bring herself to look at him, she hated his
condescending friendliness. How dare he say it was her problem?
What did he really know about it?
Photograph by
Pam Bloor

Then she pulled herself together and returned his friendly gaze.
‘Yes, you're right, I'd say the girls’ group is initially an organisational
problem, well, rooms and so on. . . .’
‘Right, then let's start with that right away, at least we've finally got
something new to talk about around here,’ said Elke, who had
become deputy leader a few months ago. Tina knew Elke was
looking for new ideas and new approaches to her work, but she
didn't have complete confidence in her, for she had never known
Elke to tackle anything which wasn't guaranteed to impress the men
in the team. If she had occasionally put forward ideas of her own and
stood up for them, if she had taken the risk of being more detached
in her dealings with the others, the men, she certainly wouldn't have
been accepted by them into their little intellectual circle.
Elke spoke, jolting her from her thoughts. ‘I'd be very surprised if
you could get the girls interested in anything other than the boys. If
you can succeed in doing that, then finding a room certainly isn't
going to be a problem. For instance, you could go into the music
room once a week and talk there.’
‘I don't know yet if talking to the girls is going to be the best way of
getting something started, but it's great to have a room for the group,
anyway. I'll print a notice for the girls, and speak to them individually
as well. The girls like the music room anyway, it's comfortable, and
the boys hardly ever go in there, because there's never anything
going on in there,’ said Tina.
‘Did I get you right, Tina, you did mean that the boys can go into
the room while the group's in there, didn't you?’ asked Hans, the
leader of the team, who had been appointed to the post by the local
council.
‘Why do you ask?’ replied Tina evasively. ‘Well, you know, I've
heard from other clubs about girls’ groups, I think it's a trend which
has to reach every club sooner or later, and now it's arrived here,
but, thank heavens, I've already had a chance to think it all over in
depth. Well, all I wanted to say is that every colleague I've spoken to
said that the boys aren't prepared to stand for being shut out of one
of the rooms, so they try to get in anyway, and when they start trying
the odd door gets broken down now and again. . . .’ Hans laughed at
his own casual manner – ‘and you know how much money we may
still have to spend on repairs this year, so I think we'd better just
leave the door open right from the start, Tina,’ he added, turning to
her and giving her a friendly smile.
‘How are the girls supposed to talk about their problems if the boys
are there?’
‘But it's when the boys are there that they'll learn to fight, isn't it?
Aren't they supposed to be learning to put up a struggle, or have I
misunderstood your feminist ideas? How are they supposed to do
that if they haven't got anyone to learn to assert themselves
against?’ Hans was getting more and more engrossed in the subject,
he was almost on the point of suggesting he should work with the
girls himself, as he already had his ideas all worked out in concrete
terms; what was more, he was rather taken by some of the girls, he
found them very attractive, and he knew they liked his ‘fatherly’
manner. Although that was just what often infuriated him, for as a
social worker, and the leader of the club into the bargain, anything
which might have gone on between him and the girls was prohibited,
and of course the little devils had figured that one out a long time
ago. They took liberties with him, and in fact he often did them
favours, but he had to remain sexually neutral, and he wondered
whether that wasn't just what the girls liked so much about it all. . .
This time it was Tina Müller who jolted him out of his thoughts, ‘Of
course the boys are going to have to keep out, or what's the point in
starting a girls’ group? It's not just going to be confined to the
appointed times, from five to seven in the evenings, either, a few
things will have to change around here. It's precisely the fact that the
boys will try to get into the girls’ group which makes it particularly
important to support the girls in keeping the boys out of their hair just
once in the week. . . .’ Tina was almost shouting, and there were
tears in her eyes. Franz, one of the probationers, took her by the
arm. ‘If you're going to get so worked up one might almost think that
it affects you personally. No one here's against the girls’ group. Even
Hans was for it, you heard him say so. And if the only problem is
whether the boys can take part or not, then I'd suggest that I hold the
motorbike group with the boys at the same time, most of them want
to join in with that anyway, and they find that much more exciting
than fussing about what the girls are doing, so we'll just be
distracting their attention.’
Elke: ‘But you certainly won't be able to solve the problem like that
on a long-term basis, Franz; I also believe that the youth club should
be at the disposal of all young people, we don't tell the Turkish
people that they can't take part in particular events, of course, but
somehow we've got to sort out just what this girls’ group is supposed
to be leading to, then we can talk about the organisational aspects
too.’ The question of the direction which their educational work ought
to be taking was all too familiar to Tina whatever the problem they
were discussing, it was always used to stifle the topic whenever
things got complicated. For everyone present knew that it was better
not to ask questions about directions or goals in their team. The
ideas of any given member, in so far as he or she had any at all,
were bound to be different from those of the others. But it always
sounded so clever to imply that one was also in pursuit of ‘the
fundamental objectives. . .’
And, sure enough, Heiner immediately inquired: ‘I thought we were
supposed to be dealing with this topic under “organisational”?’ He
was getting impatient, as he didn't really know if he had minuted the
general feeling of the meeting. ‘Elke's right, Tina should start on her
work anyway, and then if there are difficulties, well, then we can give
the thing a bigger spot on the agenda.’
That evening Tina had arranged to meet two women who were
youth workers in a girls’ home.
‘Well then, let's hear what you're doing with the girls.’
‘Well, it's like this . . .’ Tina became embarrassed. ‘I haven't
actually started yet. I was at a meeting of the team today, and to start
with I had to stand up to Hans, that's our custodian of order and
expounder of so many pedagogic principles. I soon noticed how very
subtle the resistance of the men in the team is to youth work placing
an emphasis on girls. They don't say no straight out, they want
everything to continue in the same old way, so instead they relieve
themselves of the problem by reducing it to a question of rooms, or
they say: “Tina, aren't you identifying yourself with this problem a bit
too much?” Because they realise that the problem really does
concern me and that this in itself makes me vulnerable.’
‘If you're starting up a girls’ group now,’ said Gerda, ‘the best thing
for you to do would be for you to sort out for yourself why you want
to work with girls, and then just let reality take hold of you. If you
don't think it's too much trouble you should get yourself some more
information, too, by reading some more and talking to other women
about it, ideally to women who are working with girls themselves, oh
yes, and read the article which some women from Frankfurt wrote in
the Sozialmagazin, September 1978.’
‘I'd rather you told me what I should do with the girls on Friday, if
anyone comes at all,’ said Tina.
‘Well, in weather like this I'd go out to a lake with them and get
them to talk about mothers, for instance, or just about the situation of
women in families. You should make them aware that you find
women important and that your support extends even to their
mothers. . . .’
‘And to their grandmothers, if necessary,’ Anne interrupted her.
‘But why, a lot of them get really bad treatment from their
mothers?’ Tina asked.
‘Right, and now along you come, as a wonderful girls’ youth
worker, and of course the girls think you're much better than their
mothers, because in their eyes you're often just how they imagine a
“liberated” woman to be, you can pick and choose your relationships
with others, select your dependencies, you've got more social
prestige than their mothers, and what's more, what you do to earn a
living seems much more significant to them than the underpaid,
undervalued, messy drudgery their mothers do. At home the girls
rave about you and blame their mothers for being personal failures,
just because they're not like you. The mothers'll probably react by
getting angry, well, I'd react angrily, anyway, and rather competitively,
too, most likely. Once it's got to that stage then you have hardly any
chance of approaching the mothers any more, and in practice you'll
hardly ever find fathers acting as responsible parents, at least not in
the kind of environment you're dealing with.’
‘Anyway,’ Anne chipped in, ‘it would be ridiculous if you accepted
the rift between you and the mothers and didn't take the opportunity
of involving them in your youth work with the girls, at least with
regard to what the project consists of, while in other places – through
the “Volkshochschule” [adult education college], the advice centres
and so on – there are lots of women developing a feminist approach
to working with mothers, and it's these same mothers they're working
with.’
‘OK, but the mothers often really aren't so very wonderful, am I
supposed to tell the girls: “Grow up to be like your mothers?” ’ Tina
objected.
‘No, you don't understand. The girls are meant to train for
something and get a qualification, they're meant to learn to fight for
an improvement in the quality of their living conditions, but not in
isolation from their mothers.’
‘It's all right for you two,’ groaned Tina, ‘you only have to sit back
and react to events nowadays, but I've still got to find my feet – and
get the whole group off the ground, too.’ The girls’ group has been
going for weeks now, Tina, and at every team meeting you say you
can't really tell us anything about it yet. Could it be that you don't
wish to discuss the matter with us any more?’ asked Hans pointedly.
Photograph by
Pam Bloor

‘Of course I do – I'm trying to find out what's mutually important for
the girls and myself and to work out where and how we can go on
from there in concrete terms, trying to discuss the things we're doing
and to have fun at the same time, too,’ replied Tina.
‘I see. And what does all that mean, in practice?’ asked Heiner
irritably. ‘Perhaps we might be allowed to participate in your learning
process, because we'd like to support the girls too.’
Photograph by
Pam Bloor

Tina replied calmly: ‘I think you'd do better to start some kind of

discussion with the boys, they could really use it. If you want to
support youth work with girls, then you ought to set the boys an
example of an alternative male role, rather than worry about what the
girls are doing. Instead of acting Mr Specially Nice Guy with that
extra special sensitivity towards girls, I think you'd do better to start
whittling down the boys’ privileges. Why haven't you got the courage
to put a few restrictions on their proprietary claims on the rooms, the
girls, the billiard table and a sympathetic ear from all our colleagues
here?’
‘Now just a minute,’ said Hans, ‘next you'll be saying that we give
preferential treatment to the boys, and it's our fault that what your
girls most want to do is run after the boys. . . .’
Hans was sharply interrupted by Elke. ‘What's that little gem
supposed to mean, Hans? Tina's only just begun what she's doing,
are you trying to employ some kind of time-scale to assess any
noticeable change in the youngsters’ behaviour, and if so, what's the
time-limit? It takes three weeks in your music group till the kids
who're taking part learn a single chord, and that sort of thing's a lot
more concrete! Anyway, I was talking to two girls from the group.
Whereas before they used to be under enormous pressure to tell me
all about how marvellous their boyfriends were, now they don't seem
to find it so central any more. They were telling me about a musical
they're planning; it's about a girl who doesn't want to go to school
any more, because she gets discovered by a record producer who
wants to make her a pop singer, and about all the various things she
goes through from then on . . .’
‘Oh yes, and who's playing the producer? Could it be you, Tina?’
Heiner was trying to be funny.
The girls have no trouble playing a boy, on the contrary, they know
every nuance of male behaviour. But maybe we'll take a boy for the
part anyway, as it's an extremely repulsive one, and none of the girls
wants to go near it – because whatever you think, what we're trying
to achieve isn't merely a question of a crude exchange of roles,’ said
Tina cuttingly.
Tina, I can't take any more of this aggression of yours. You're
deliberately provoking us, and Elke's taking sides with you, what's
more, though all Hans did was to ask a perfectly dispassionate
question about what you and the girls are doing in this group. In fact
you've been changing a good deal recently – I don't know whether I
should congratulate you on your new self-assurance or whether I
should conclude that you've been dishonest with us, because
somehow you've been keeping something from us all the time –
anyway I don't remember your ever being like this before. I'd be glad
if we could start getting on with each other again as well as we used
to a couple of months ago. If we're going to try to fight back against
the oppression of girls, then it's no use fighting amongst ourselves.
So, please, Tina, be your old self again!’ Franz was gazing at her
sincerely, he really meant it.
‘Do you really believe you've got nothing to do with this
oppression?’ asked Tina quietly, ‘do you really think that everything's
different here in the team? If we really agree about what we're doing,
then you've got to direct your opposition at men who are maintaining
oppression, and not at women who are exploring new ground.
Maybe you should start by accepting that my problems are different
to yours and that we're only getting in each other's way with our
divergent expectations.’
‘Oh, please, let's not turn this into a self-analysis session,’ Hans
interrupted. He hadn't heard everything that had been said and was
afraid there was something going on behind his back. ‘We've argued
enough, now let's start being sensible again. We've still got to work
out the duty schedule for a whole month.’

Tina Müller was on day-duty. It was six o'clock and the club had only
been open for an hour. A few twelve-year-olds were playing cards in
the entrance hall, and there were only a few kids in the coffee-bar.
Outside on the wall in front of the club sat a few male regulars with
beer bottles in their hands; they were waiting there to see who might
come along. Tina was alone. Her colleagues weren't going to arrive
until the film-show at eight. She went into the office and filled out
forms about the allocation of rooms over the next few weeks.
She heard a muffled scream. She opened the door and stood in
the corridor listening. The noise was coming from the girls’ loo. She
ran down there and saw Tom, an eighteen-year-old who was at the
club nearly every day, and a girl she had never seen before; he had
pulled her trousers down and was pushing her back across the
washbasin and trying to rape her. Tina screamed, ‘Tom, are you
crazy?’ He seemed startled, let go of the girl and became
aggressive.
‘Get out, Tina, go on, piss off! A new bit of talent always gets taken
for a trial run in this place.’ He moved towards her to push her away,
and Tina punched him. Tom just swore at them – ‘You cunts,’ turned
around, did up his flies with a tug, and went out.

‘Well then, let's talk about the result of Tina's new level of
awareness, shall we?’ said Hans, when Elke had asked at the team
meeting about points for the agenda.
‘Now pull yourself together, Hans, if you're going to start like that
we can save all the discussion and split into opposing camps right
away,’ replied Elke curtly.
‘Oh, I see, you two have already agreed on where you stand, have
you? The best thing for the two of you to do would be to start going
to a karate club, so you'll be able to handle the boys here more
easily in future.’ It was patently obvious that the conflict was making
Hans panic. The boys had complained to him and demanded that
action be taken against Tina – an eighteen-year-old being ‘clouted’
by a woman youth-worker was something which had to be avenged,
and they knew they could get Hans on their side. They too had heard
of his disparaging remarks about Tina's girls’ group and they had not
been lost on them. But Hans was in a quandary, because the
majority of the girls in the club had got together and written a wall
poster in which they had drawn up a whole string of demands for
activities of their own, beginning with a woman to teach them karate,
a room of their own which they could use at any time, and so on.
Hans didn't want to disappoint the girls, but on the whole he was
annoyed with them when he saw how they, in their naivety, were
suddenly allowing themselves to be towed along in Tina's wake. She
seemed to have succeeded in getting them really stirred up. The
girls were now spending half their time without the boys, but what did
that have to do with emancipation? And in any case, the girls were
tremendously important for the club's work with the boys, because if
the girls weren't there for the boys, the boys might drift off to another
youth club. After all, they couldn't all become gays, just because
some of the girls had decided to behave like prudish old maids. He'd
been doing this job for years now, after all, and had seen a lot of
colleagues come and go. It was just no use taking such a stubborn
view of things right from the start.
Franz raised his hand: ‘Well, I think if we're going to have a
serious discussion about this then we've got to consider it on two
levels. One: whether, and for what reasons, we should allow
ourselves to go so far as to hit a kid – or if not, why not; and two: the
attempted rape . . .’
‘Just a moment, it's only Tina who says he tried to rape her. He
says they were just doing a bit of heavy petting . . .’ interrupted
Heiner.
‘Then we've got to ask the girl,’ replied Franz.
 ‘She never came back again, of course, and Tina only asked her
for her first name – sensible of her,’ said Hans, with feigned
indignation.
‘Yes, that is a. pity,’ said Elke, ‘she would have made such an
interesting case for your statistics on visitors, Hans!’
‘I don't think,’ said Tina turning to Franz, ‘that we can discuss the
two things in isolation from one another; Tom was using violence and
I reacted with violence. OK, Tom and I weren't in the same position,
I'm a youth worker here, but he was in control of the situation by
virtue of his brutality towards the girl, who wasn't able to deal with it
herself any more – and who's certainly never learnt to fight back
effectively.’
‘But that doesn't mean you immediately have to hit him, because,
after all, he'd already let go of her,’ replied Hans. ‘You could have
just talked to him in a reasoned fashion, couldn't you, you've always
got on fine with him otherwise, haven't you, or did you two have
some old bone to pick with each other?’ he asked.
‘Rubbish!’ said Tina. ‘Don't you dare insinuate it was all my fault. I
found the situation bad enough for me to clout him one. And apart
from that I don't see why I should start “reasoned” discussions with
rapists. How much am I supposed to take? A girl is sexually
assaulted by way of welcome and I'm supposed to act the mother
who clasps the boy to her bosom and says, “there, there. . . .” What
do you actually expect of me? I'm not schizophrenic; how can one
part of me get involved in the day-to-day struggles against sexism,
while as soon as I get to work I'm supposed to let the boys’
behaviour and your expectations of me drive a wedge between me
and the girls.
‘Do I stop being a woman once I'm here? – although it's just that,
my femininity, that you're trying to take advantage of.’
‘OK, OK, we didn't realise that we'd fallen foul of a feminist, all of a
sudden,’ Hans interrupted her.
‘Well, well, at last you've revealed what you really think of youth
work with girls,’ said Elke thoughtfully.
‘I feel bound to disagree with you on this point, Hans,’ said Franz.
’Of course Tina's angry, that's understandable, and she's got every
right to be a feminist, we can only learn from her in that respect. I
don't think we men are really capable of judging a situation like the
one Tina found herself in. And Tina has to have the right to
experience what happens to her at work, and to feel affected by it, in
exactly the same way as she does in her so-called free time. In any
case we men never find ourselves in situations like that. . . .’
‘Oh yes, we do, I can be beaten up in a pub too, or just recently,
remember, Franz, when the “Alete Rockers” came round here and
did their best to provoke a fight. ... If I hadn't known just the right
behaviour to adopt. . . .’
‘Heiner, I don't think you've quite got the point; a rape is a form of
violence which happens every day, but you men like to play it down
by declaring it an exception or putting it down to high spirits – “boys
will be boys” – as if you'd got drunk and broken a window,’ said Elke.
‘My friends, let's see what conclusions we can draw from our
experience,’ began Hans in fatherly tones. This was his pitiable
attempt to clear the air a bit. Nobody took any notice of him, Franz
leaned forward and spoke to Tina: ‘What do you want to do? Shall
we discuss the girls’ demands or should we talk about the incident
again?’ he asked tentatively, aware of the delicacy of the situation.
Before Tina could reply, Hans spoke again: ‘Of course, I fully realise
the importance of working with girls, and I think you're right to stand
up for them the way you do; I would, however, find it excessive, and
both educationally and politically unsound, to spend all our time from
now on talking about whether everything that goes on in this youth
club should be dictated by this particular problem, which is what's
happening in our team at the moment. Therefore I would urge you,
Tina, to struggle only in those areas where it's worth the effort, and
to reduce the extent of your concentration on girls, or whatever you
want to call it, to reasonable and manageable dimensions. You'd be
doing us all a good turn.’ He took a deep breath. This little speech
was his contribution, as it were, to peace in the team, and he was
very pleased with himself.
‘I don't think that's possible,’ said Tina. ‘If you had come to realise
that you have to fight back, then you wouldn't want to have your
struggle restricted to certain times of the day. For us women and for
the girls, concentrating on girls can only mean getting together and
changing our everyday lives. My dear Hans, I can't promise you that
I'll succeed in persuading the girls to develop a critical awareness
only on Tuesdays and Fridays between five and eight, and otherwise
guarantee peace and quiet between these four walls, the kind of
peace and quiet which you seem to need so as to concentrate on
working-class boys here.’
‘Tina, you'll have to cut down on the extent of your work with the
girls, at least until we've reached a point where we can discuss
things calmly again,’ said Hans sharply.
‘If you start putting pressure on her nothing will happen calmly
here, ever again,’ Franz intervened.
Hans: ‘I can't see how I'm going to straighten this one out. Who's
supposed to have started all this, anyway, is it all supposed to be
Tom's fault, or maybe even mine, am I the one who's to blame? Why
won't Tina tell me what she really thinks? Am I not permitted to
discuss anything with her because I'm a man? Why am I just a butt
for your aggressions, why can't we have a constructive discussion of
what's essentially at stake in this debate?’
He was cut short by Elke: ‘Poor Hans, you make my heart bleed.
Do you really think you're so indispensably central to this issue? You
really are taking this as a personal insult, aren't you! Maybe you
should try to deal with your own vanity before you do anything else.
What do you think you've got to offer the girls? Have you ever made
a serious practical attempt to raise their status, possibly even to the
detriment of the boys, or to strengthen their position without thinking
first about winning their admiration?’
‘Aha, so now I'm being relegated to the chauvinists’ corner. Great,
that's what your sort always do when you run out of coherent
arguments,’ Hans shouted at Elke. ‘And I'm not ashamed of being
honest about my feelings. I may be a man but I'm still just as
emotionally involved,’ he added.
‘You're scared, that's all,’ Tina butted in, ‘and you're putting up a
fight because the last thing you want to have to do is change
yourself. You wish the girls needed you, but they can do without you,
and you know that though you won't admit it.’
Tina, do they really need any one of us? Maybe this is the
question we ought to be asking ourselves. Don't you think we all try
to make ourselves indispensable to the kids? I hope the girls only
need you to the extent that you're there to initiate learning processes
– I trust you're not using that to make them dependent on you. ... So
there are a whole range of problems relating to the extent of our
usefulness in society as social workers, and particularly to the
significance of our practical work, and I don't think you can just
attribute them all to Hans. That's going too far.’
‘All right, Heiner,’ said Tina, ‘somehow I also feel that we've
reached a point where we should stop. I've just had enough. I'm not
trying to put the team under any pressure, but I feel I ought to
mention that I'm not sure if I can see any point in my continuing to
work in this team. I think the differences between us are just more
than I can cope with.’
‘But don't make any snap decisions, Tina. What are a few months
when you're trying to overcome sex-specific differences?’ replied
Hans.
‘Yes, but it's all such a struggle,’ said Tina, ‘I'll have to think about
it.’ ’Elke, I've decided to give up my job at the youth club. I can't
handle it at the moment, I need some peace and quiet, and I've got
to be able to concentrate my energies more on my own interests
than on the day-to-day struggles to defend our position.’
‘I do understand how you feel, but I can't really say I think you're
doing the right thing. For instance, what's going to become of the
girls at the club? And don't you think that at least Fritz and Heiner
might learn from what happens here?’
‘Yes, I'm sure they will, perhaps I'm just being too impatient at the
moment. Maybe I am doing the wrong thing, too, maybe I'm just
capitulating, but I want to find out what it's like to have to discuss
working with girls only with other women.’
‘Don't think that's going to demand any less energy, Tina.’
‘Of course not, I know it won't, but it'll certainly be less frustrating,
and in any case, I'm not trying to say that the path I've chosen is the
right one. What you're doing is just as important, of course; but I've
just reached the point where I have to decide for myself – and only
for myself.’ Elke sighed. Tina continued: ‘Won't you carry on what I
was doing with the girls for me? I think you've got more strength than
I have in that respect, and anyway, you'd really be taking a load off
my mind.’
 ‘Well, well, Tina, so you do have a guilty conscience after all, don't
you? But all right, I'll see if I can get anything going with the girls; I
hope they'll still be interested, because they're already very attached
to you, and your departure will make them all the more so. On the
one hand it's hard to continue in this situation when everything's
gone so wrong, but of course on the other hand you've already done
such a lot of ground work. By the way, I was going to ask you, what
are you going to do now? I suppose you're going on the dole?’
‘No, I may be able to work in the women's refuge, they're looking
for someone to help with the children.’
‘I suppose we ought to try to get to know other women who are
doing the same kind of work, so we'd be able to talk to each other
about our experiences . . . but there aren't any of us who would have
the time,’ said Elke.
Tina laughed: The best thing to do would be to write a song and
make a record about it!’

Note
1 Originally published in ‘Jahrbuch der Sozialarbeit 3’ Copyright © 1979 by Rowohlt
Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg.