Jane Pilcher - Women of Their Time: Generation, Gender Issues and Feminism

First published 1998 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Copyright Jane Pilcher 1998

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Pilcher, Jane

Women of their time: generation, gender issues and

feminism. - (Cardiff papers in qualitative research)

1. Women - Great Britain - Social conditions 2. Women - Great

Britain - History - 20th Century

I. Title

305.420941

In Britain during the first three decades of the twentieth century, women struggled to obtain the vote and in 1928, finally won this key right of citizenship on the same terms as men. In Britain during the last three decades of the twentieth century, a woman became the leader of a major political party and later, Prime Minister. In the 1997 General Election, 120 women were elected as Members of Parliament, considerably more than ever before. Between the beginning of the century and its end, fundamental change has clearly occurred in womens participation in formal politics. Further, the shift from lacking the vote to holding office as Prime Minister is indicative of profound change in womens position and status elsewhere in society, including in opportunities for education and employment. There are few who would deny the key role feminism has played in bringing about this transformation.

The pace and widespread nature of change in womens status during the twentieth century means that, throughout their lives, older and younger women have experienced significantly different opportunities and constraints. As Walby explains, women of different birth cohorts have faced contrasting gendered opportunity structures, with dissimilar sets of options and resources, disadvantages and vulnerabilities. Consequently, women of different birth cohorts are likely to have different values and moralities, different political agendas and priorities (1997: 11), not least with regard to gender issues and to feminism itself. British social scientific data on womens responses to feminism is lacking but a range of evidence on gender role attitudes in Britain and elsewhere does show that younger women are more liberal and egalitarian than older women (for example, Bell and Schwede 1985; Harding 1988; Misra and Panigrahi 1995; Roper and Labeff 1977; Scott et al 1996; Slevin and Ray Wingrove 1983; Thornton et al 1983; Witherspoon 1985).

Studies on cohort variation in attitudes to gender roles have generally been conducted via surveys, and hence with a quantitative research design. The survey approach has a number of distinct advantages as a method of examining the significance of cohort. It allows claims of representativeness and generalisability of findings, and often includes the examination of the correlation between cohort-age and other variables, including marital and employment status. The survey approach also facilitates cross-national comparisons (for example, Scott et al 1996) and thereby the development of explanations of changes in gender attitudes and behaviour over time and between cultures. Whilst surveys make these important contributions through providing, say, data on the proportions of each cohort agreeing or disagreeing with a particular questionnaire item, they are not designed to explore the equally interesting question of differences in the ways agreement or disagreement may be expressed according to cohort. Surveys give data on the final product (the attitude) but can tell us little about how that product was formulated. Arguably, pre-coded responses do violence to the richness and variety of what might otherwise be said on a particular issue. In contrast, qualitative studies, through allowing interviewees to answer in their own words, do allow a detailed examination of the vocabulary used to report responses to gender issues and an exploration of the ways in which this may vary by cohort. However, cohort studies of womens gender role attitudes using a qualitative research design remain rare. Consequently, although we know from surveys that patterns of agreement and disagreement on the issue of, say, traditional gender roles show marked differences by cohort, we have little sense of the reasoning, particularly in relation to gender, that results in the reported disagreement or agreement.