Gender and the transition from school to work in belfast

Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 619–630, 1999 Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/99 $–see front matter

Pergamon

PII S0277-5395(99)00072-2

GENDER AND THE TRANSITION FROM SCHOOL TO WORK IN BELFAST Madeleine Leonard Department of Sociology and Social Policy, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK

Synopsis — This article is based on interviews carried out in 1991 with 122 school pupils between the ages of 15 and 18 from a Catholic working-class area characterised by high, long-term unemployment located in Belfast. It includes further research carried out in 1998. The article focuses on three main aspects of young people’s lives: their intended career aspirations, their involvement in term-time employment while at school and their participation in paid work within the household. The article suggests that the transition from school to work plays a crucial role in the reproduction of gender relations. The article demonstrates the ways in which young people at times accept and at other times challenge taken-forgranted assumptions regarding traditional gender stereotypes. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

ing-class Catholic estate in West Belfast, I intend to examine some of these assumptions. The article will look at three aspects of these young people’s lives: their intended career aspirations on leaving school; their involvement in paid employment while at school, and their participation in domestic work within the household. The article suggests that while young people from the area display a number of characteristics which indicate the reproduction of existing patterns of social differentiation and inequality based on gender, these are by no means fixed. Rather, the young men and women who took part in the study actively negotiated gender roles and at times challenged taken-for-granted gender identities.

Outdated notions that a woman’s anatomy, through her capacity to bear children, determined the shape of her entire life have been replaced by complex debates as to how different social structures interact to produce the diversity of patterns of gender relations that are to be found across different societies and over time. There is general agreement that over the past two decades, the position of women in western industrial societies has greatly improved (Adkins, 1995; Dowds, Devine, & Breen, 1997; Trewsdale, McLaughlin, & McCay, 1999). This development has been facilitated by the increasing participation of women in paid employment outside the household and by legislative changes in the United Kingdom, such as the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act. Hence, gender is regarded as a less constraining influence than it was a generation ago. Young people, particularly girls, are regarded as less likely to replicate the household patterns of their parents. As beneficiaries of the transformations of the previous two decades, they are more likely to be able to exercise non-gendered choices in terms of their participation in household work, their career aspirations and their participation in paid employment. However, is this the case? Through interviews with 69 boys and 53 girls, aged between 15 and 18 years of age, from one work-

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

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The school pupils were interviewed as part of a wider study of the economic activity of households in the area, which was carried out by the author (Leonard, 1994). The estate was deliberately chosen as it represented one of the peak unemployment areas in Northern Ireland and was identified as the worse estate within Catholic West Belfast in terms of unemployment levels, poor housing and ill-health (Boal, Doherty, & Pringle, 1974; Doherty, 1977). A survey, carried out between 1989 and 1990, of

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married couples and single people living in one in four households in the area revealed very high levels of unemployment (Leonard, 1994). Only 26% of the men interviewed were in formal employment, mainly in unskilled manual work. Only 22% of the women interviewed were formally employed. Three quarters of these women worked in part-time, low-status service occupations. Hence, the occupations of adult men and women from the estate were very gender specific. The study revealed that the high male unemployment rate had little impact on the participation of men in domestic work within the household. The women in the area, regardless of whether they had access to paid employment outside the home, were mainly responsible for domestic work and childcare. Hence, young people growing up in these households were presented with very traditional gender-specific role models. The wider survey was concerned with examining the range of work practices prevalent on the estate including: informal economy work, voluntary work, and self-provisioning within households. I felt that interviewing school pupils about to enter the labour market would provide a fuller picture of the range of economic activities pursued by inhabitants of the estate and illuminate some of the problems facing girls in particular as they make vocational decisions and prepare themselves for the world of work. All of the pupils interviewed attended single-sex secondary schools catering to the area. The pupils were interviewed separately in the schools that they attended and each interview lasted approximately 1 hour. The pupils represented an almost total sample of school pupils between the ages of 15 and 18 from the area. The only pupils excluded were the small number of boys and girls who were absent from school during the period of the interviews. The article argues that while these pupils have been educated in a context which increasingly emphasises equal opportunities, these school-based factors have little influence compared to those of the home and workplace, which remain in line with traditional gender stereotypes.

CAREER ASPIRATIONS Sociologists have long been concerned with examining the gender-specific nature of the la-

bour market (Adkins, 1995; Charles, 1993; Crowley, 1997; Smyth, 1997). Their investigations have highlighted the concentration of women within a very narrow range of occupational groups. By contrast, men are spread throughout a much wider range of occupations. In general terms, women are confined both to lower-grade jobs (vertical segregation) and to different jobs from men (horizontal segregation). The areas of employment in which women are concentrated are cleaning, nursing, teaching, and other occupations classified under the so-called `helping’ professions. It is almost as if the domestic role of looking after others is transferred to the work situation. Education plays a major role in preparing young men and women for their later roles in society and, therefore, helps to maintain a division of labour based on sexual differences. As late as 1963, the Newsom Report, which informed educational policy in Northern Ireland stated that: 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 . . . 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, p. 3)

Hence, it is unsurprising that schools conventionally steered girls into predictable traditional directions. However, the UK 1988 Education Act fundamentally reformed the educational system requiring for the first time for boys and girls to be offered the same curriculum. The Northern Ireland Curriculum introduced in 1989 addressed the perceived narrowness of the existing school curriculum, particularly the under-achievement of 16-year-old school pupils, by making science a compulsory subject and establishing a renewed emphasis on basic skills (Caul, 1993). The girls who took part in this study were among the first to benefit from these changes in the curriculum. However, given these standardised changes it is still the case that girls remain unwilling to enter traditional male-dominated occupations (Carey, 1997). Northern Irish women tend to be employed in traditional gendered areas of employment, usually on a lowpaid, part-time basis (Trewsdale, 1992). Carey

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast

(1997) argues that if the numbers of women and girls currently engaged in training in nontraditional skills are representative of future developments, then change in the future is likely to remain sluggish. Drawing on a report by the Training and Employment Agency, Northern Ireland’s largest and most important centralised training organisation, Carey indicates that of the 1,614 trainees across Northern Ireland’s 11 Training Centres, a mere 1% were women (Carey, 1997, p. 109). Indeed, careers’ advisers at the single-sex girls’ school in this study seemed more concerned with raising the pupils’ class expectations in steering them towards perceived middle-class occupations, such as teaching and nursing, while keeping the traditional gender-specific nature of such occupations intact. All the interviewees were asked about their career intentions on leaving school. Of course, I am aware of the limitations of this approach, in that career intentions may remain aspirations. Roberts (1975) suggests that individuals rarely choose jobs, they simply take what is available. This is backed up by research carried out in 1995 by Sheenan and Tomlinson (1999) into the job search strategies of unemployed people in West Belfast. Over half of the respondents who took part in their research stated that they would consider any job that was available. The economic stagnation of Northern Ireland and, in particular, regions such as West Belfast, may pose enormous hurdles to young people seeking any type of employment. Moreover, career intentions may not remain fixed but may change in the light of educational qualifications obtained and formal and informal job opportunities. The inability to obtain employment in one’s intended occupation may lead to lower job expectations. Alternatively, the reality of working in one’s intended occupation may turn out very differently from that expected and may lead young people to raise or change their occupational intentions. Nonetheless, the aspirations of young people about to enter the labour market provide an interesting indication of the extent to which intended career plans remain influenced by gender. Table 1 provides a breakdown of the career aspirations of the girls and boys and indicates that gender continues to play an important role in shaping young people’s future occupational intentions. The list of occupational aspi-

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rations mentioned by the girls mirrors the gender-based divisions of labour which operate in the wider society. Several of the girls’ occupational intentions centred around jobs connected with caring for others. Throughout the interviews, the girls indicated that they felt that more job satisfaction could be gained from helping other people and this provided a major motivation for their occupational choices. Many girls stated that they wanted to do something worthwhile for society and saw their occupational aspirations in that light. Just over one third of the girls in the sample saw clerical work as a potential future career. Clerical work was regarded as a realistic, achievable, respectable working-class career. In a study carried out in the mid 1970s, Sharpe (1976) suggested that working-class girls often favoured clerical work because they had unrealistically glamorised impressions of what it entailed. They viewed clerical work as giving them an opportunity to dress up and meet people, when in reality it generally involved very menial, monotonous, and increasingly deskilled work. While this study is quite dated, nonetheless, research by Cockburn (1991) and Pringle (1989) indicate that stereotypical images of women’s sexuality continue to dominate aspects of the labour market. In her study of secretaries, Pringle (1989) illustrates how relationships between bosses and secretaries are often based on sexual and family imagery. The secretary acts as mother, wife, and paid servant who must protect, provide emotional sup-

Table 1. Career Aspirations By Gender Boys

Girls

Occupation

No.

%

No.

%

Tertiary education Youth training scheme Clerical work Trade Working with children Teaching Nursing Social work Air hostess Catering Nun Hairdresser Shop assistant Any job Total

31 14 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21 69

45 20 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 31 100

6 1 19 0 8 3 5 2 1 2 1 1 1 3 53

11 2 35 0 15 6 9 4 2 4 2 2 2 6 100

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port, and estimate the needs of the boss. Many young women in Northern Ireland continue to enter clerical occupations. Data from the 1991 Northern Ireland Census Economic Activity Report indicated that the majority of economically active women over the age of 16 were employed in clerical and secretarial occupations. This sexual division of labour was also apparent in labour market statistics collected by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency in 1997. When the single-sex girls’ school was first visited in 1991, careers’ teachers put a lot of effort into preparing pupils for clerical careers, and typing and other office skills were often compulsory subjects for pupils from the fourth year onward. Indeed, the pupils in the top stream classes within the school, following an academic route comprised of GCSE and A levels were encouraged to also learn typing to have ‘something to fall back on’ in case their academic aspirations failed to materialise. A return visit to the school in 1998 to look at the term-time employment experiences of 15-year-old school pupils revealed less emphasis being placed on encouraging girls to amalgamate academic choices with secretarial courses (Leonard, 1999). However, discussions with the one of the careers’ teachers in the school indicated that only the most academically able pupils were encouraged to follow a purely academic path. Less academically able girls were still encouraged to develop office skills with word-processing and computer skills courses replacing the original focus on typing courses. Only 11% of girls in the sample, as compared to 45% of boys, intended to undertake some form of tertiary education. Lees (1993) points out that the first thing to emphasise about the dynamics of sexism is the need to look beyond the formal organisation of the school as an institution to the cultural and social interaction that goes on in and around school life. Traditionally, girls receive all sorts of contradictory messages about whether their future lies in marriage combined perhaps with low-status, low-paid work or a career. Girls who opt for a career are often encouraged to choose one which will effectively allow them to combine work demands with responsibility for a home and family. Hence, even the girls who intended to pursue careers saw themselves as married within 5 years time and felt that their career needs should be subordinate

to that of their commitments to newly formed families. Like the females interviewed by Chisholm and du Bois-Reymond (1993) in Britain, they did not appreciate the difficulties associated with maintaining continuous and rewarding employment once they have children. On the other hand, I do not want to present an overly negative portrait of the girls’ gendered occupational intentions. On a positive note, the girls were very clear about what types of occupations they hoped to follow, and this contrasted starkly with the indecision that characterised the boys’ responses. Just under half of the boys in the sample intended to enter some form of tertiary education. However, the majority of this group were unable to tell me what types of courses they would like to pursue or what specific occupation they had in mind. By contrast, the girls were very specific about the courses they hoped to pursue and the likely occupations these qualifications would provide them with access to. This may of course reflect changes in the labour market in Northern Ireland and the impact of the ‘troubles’1 on the economy. The ‘troubles’ have reduced inward investment and have cost the province jobs in industry and manufacturing, but they have also led to an expansion of jobs in the public sector (Simpson, 1996). Hence, the traditional industries employing men have been declining while the industries most likely to employ women have been expanding. While this may have a knock-on effect on school pupils’ perceived career opportunities, nonetheless, the detailed career intentions of the girls should not be under-rated. Their determination to obtain qualifications related to specific careers may enable them to challenge more effectively traditional gender stereotypical images of their roles in later life when they form their own families. In attempting to deal with Northern Ireland’s unemployment problem, the British government developed a number of training schemes targeted at school leavers. A variation on the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) established in Britain in the early 1980s was introduced in Northern Ireland in September 1982 entitled the Youth Training Programme (YTP). However, participation rates in training schemes vary according to gender. Shuttleworth (1994, p. 24) found that only 15% of Catholic females participated in YTP courses, as compared to

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast

28% of Catholic males. This gender disparity was even more prominent among the boys and girls I interviewed. One fifth of the boys hoped to enter a YTP, compared to only 2% of the girls. To some extent the boys’ intentions to embark on a training scheme were motivated by lack of alternatives. As in the rest of the United Kingdom, government training schemes are compulsory for those leaving school at 16 without any formal employment, and young people who refuse to enter training schemes may forfeit their entitlement to unemployment benefit. Finn’s (1985) research in Britain outlined young people’s realistic yet pessimistic assessment of the benefits of youth training schemes. Many young people viewed youth training schemes as supplying employers with a cheap, easily exploitable workforce. The persistence of mass youth unemployment undermines the goal of youth training schemes to prepare young people effectively for the world of work. Trainees continue to enter a depressed labour market where they face competition from unemployed adults and an annual new batch of subsidised school leavers. From her research in Britain, Wickham (1985) suggests that many youth training schemes do not cater to the specific needs of girls and those that do perpetuate pre-existing stereotypes and divisions. Most of the boys and girls I interviewed held negative images of youth training schemes. However, while girls felt they could resist entry to such training schemes by obtaining jobs in the service sector, boys, in the absence of perceived job opportunities for working-class males, contemplated entry to training schemes as a prelude to qualifying for unemployment benefit. The pessimism of the boys in the sample is reflected in the high number who had no specific employment intention and who stated that ‘any job will do’. Thirty-one percent of the boys chose this option, compared to only 6% of the girls. Only 4% of boys mentioned a trade as a possible occupation. This was based on their perceptions of job opportunities in West Belfast, where even apprenticeships now lie in the realm of fantasy. The influence of local labour markets on young people’s occupational intentions and opportunities has long been recognised. Ashton, Maguire, and Spilsbury (1988) suggest that local labour markets are of fundamental importance in affecting not just the chances of an individual obtaining

623

work, but also the type of job available, the chances of moving between jobs and the length of time spent unemployed. Hence, the boys’ indecisive responses to questions concerning their future occupational intentions may be related to their realistic assessment regarding the lack of employment opportunities in the local labour market. The aspirations of the girls who took part in the study seemed inconsistent with local labour market opportunities. The mothers of the pupils I interviewed who worked outside the household were employed in a range of lowgrade, low-status, part-time occupations including cleaners, dinner-ladies, shop assistants, and caterers. Several of the girls aspired to occupations of a higher status than that of their mothers’ generation. While these occupational intentions remained gender specific, nonetheless they contained career development potential unlike the unskilled occupations that characterised their mothers’ working lives. The likelihood of the girls achieving their occupational aspirations lay outside the scope of this study, and because of the anonymous nature of the survey (imposed as a pre-condition by the principals who consented to granting me access to pupils in their schools), no follow-up study was possible. However, Bates (1993) suggests that in areas characterised by job scarcity and high unemployment, the structural barriers of class and gender come more forcibly into play in selection processes so that class-gendered divisions of labour become reinforced. Hence, given the growing stagnation of the Northern Ireland economy and the surplus labour power available, the working-class girls from the disadvantaged Catholic community selected for the study may face considerable hurdles in attempting to realise their occupational aspirations. Of course, many school pupils do not have to leave school to obtain their first labour market experience. Part-time jobs for school pupils is a growing phenomena and the next section will examine the extent to which such jobs are structured along gender lines. PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT AMONG SCHOOL PUPILS Part-time work plays a major role in the Northern Ireland economy. The collapse of Northern Ireland’s traditional industries, such

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as shipbuilding and manufacturing, has been accompanied by a rapid expansion in the service sector (Simpson, 1996). However, this expansion has not been large enough to compensate for losses in the traditional industries and has mainly resulted in the creation of low-paid, part-time work opportunities for women. Irish women tend to leave the labour market when they have a child and return to work in a parttime capacity once their children reach school age (Coakley, 1997; Trewsdale et al., 1999). This contrasts with the situation in North America and much of Europe where women are more likely to take maternity leave and continue with their full-time job (Dex & Shaw, 1986; Dex & Walters, 1989; Fagan & Rubery, 1996). Lack of adequate childcare facilities and an ideology that places the responsibility for childcare on to the mother’s shoulders continues to pose a serious impediment to the employment prospects of women in Northern Ireland (Davies & McLaughlin, 1991; Roulston, 1989). About 40% of women who have a paid job outside the home in Northern Ireland, work part-time (Montgomery & Davies, 1991, p. 75; Trewsdale et al., 1999, p. 3). Compared to Britain, a higher proportion of women who work part-time in Northern Ireland work less than 16 hours per week and are thus excluded from minimum employment rights (McLaughlin, Trewsdale, & McCay, 1999, p. 9). The significance of part-time work in the lives of working adult women has been well documented. What has not received the same attention is the extent to which part-time work plays a part in the lives of young people about to enter the mainstream labour market. This neglect is partly due to the way in which statistics on the economic activity of people in the United Kingdom are collected. Labour Force Surveys use the term ‘usual’ economic activity to categorise respondents’ economic status. This results in the category of ‘full-time student’ being given precedence over ‘in employment’, and renders those who do part-time work while still at school as invisible workers. It is also worth mentioning here that one in six (17%) adult women employees in Northern Ireland earn less than the weekly lower earnings limit (LEL), as compared to 3% of adult men. The LEL is the threshold below which National Insurance contributions are not paid and, therefore, entitlement to a range of contributory benefits is severely restricted (Mc-

Cay, McLaughlin, & Trewsdale, 1999, p. 4). Hence, because of their lower earnings, there is a greater tendency for women compared to men to be incorrectly categorised as ‘economically inactive’. All of the pupils who took part in the survey were asked whether they engaged in any paid employment outside school hours. There was very little difference in participation rates between girls and boys. Thirty boys, 44% of the sample and 21 girls, 40% of the sample, were involved in part-time work. Of those boys who engaged in part-time employment, 16 (53%) were under 16 years of age, while 14 (47%) were over 16 years of age. Eight of the girls in part-time employment, 38% of the sample, were under 16 years of age, while 13 (62%) were over 16 years of age. This age stipulation is important, as young people in the United Kingdom must be aged 16 before they qualify for a National Insurance number. The employment of young people under 16 is restricted by legislation which limits the amount of hours they can work per week and the types of work they can engage in. In many instances, these legislative requirements were not adhered to. Indeed, part-time employment for young people while still at school was characterised by exploitative wages and working conditions. Alongside married women, young people who are still at school prove very attractive to employers seeking a flexible and cheap labour force. Young people can be paid less than the adult rate and in many instances employers can evade their usual employment obligations through the usage of their labour. The research revealed very exploitative hourly wage rates for school pupils and no significant pattern emerged between the sexes. Both were equally exploited in the juvenile labour market. Almost one third of both boys and girls were paid £1 or under per hour. While this study was carried out in 1991 and was limited to one specific Catholic working-class housing estate, research carried out by the author into term-time employment among pupils drawn from the whole of the Belfast area in 1998 confirmed the tendency for school pupils to be paid exploitative wage rates. In this latter study, 12% of the sample earned £1 or under per hour and 65% earned under the recommended £3 minimum wage (Leonard, 1999). The majority of the sample worked approximately 10 hours per week. While these hours

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast

may appear insignificant, Hobbs and McKechnie (1998) point out that if these hours were added to the normal school week of around 30 hours (excluding the amount of time spent doing homework), then most of the youngsters would probably be working longer hours than those in the adult labour market. The low number of hours coupled with the wage rates outlined above meant that part-time work rarely generated high levels of weekly income. However, since many of the young workers came from households where the adults were unemployed, out of school earnings provided them with the opportunity to buy the teenage commodities their parents could not afford. The previous discussion indicates that many young people first confront and experience the social and economic relations of wage labour prior to leaving school. This practice is not peculiar to Northern Ireland. A number of recent studies have indicated that term-time employment is a normal experience for an increasing number of school pupils, particularly around the ages of 14 to 16 (McKechnie, Hobbs, & Lindsay, 1997; Middleton, Shropshire, & Corden, 1998; O’Donnell & White, 1998). The Belfast survey revealed no significant disparities between boys and girls in terms of the age at which they commenced work, the weekly number of hours worked or hourly rates of pay. However, significant patterns emerged in the types of work undertaken by boys and girls. In particular, the research indicated that the juvenile labour market like the adult labour market was divided along gender lines. Table 2 presents a breakdown of the variety of jobs the boys and girls engaged in and indicates that gender differences are very apparent in this form of wage labour. The juvenile labour market was both vertically and horizontally segregated along gender lines. Construction work tended to be a male domain while hairdressing and the catering industry tended to attract women workers. A substantial number of the juvenile occupations involved selling items to others. However, there were significant differences between the sexes in the nature and location of such work. Boys were involved in a much more diverse range of occupations involving selling, including: running market stalls; engaging in door-to-door selling; delivering coal, milk, and newspapers as well as shop work. In many cases, these jobs demanded considerable physical strength, for

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example, in the lifting of bags of coal and crates of milk. The language used to describe the persons associated with delivery was particularly revealing as to how such work is viewed as masculine. Hence, the male delivery workers were helping the coalman and the milkman. Boys also had to cope with the outdoor elements, as door-to-door selling, running market stalls, delivery work, and indeed, the construction industry, involved outside work. Girls, by contrast, were involved in selling within shops, mainly supermarket stores. This type of employment accounted for almost half of the types of jobs for girls in the sample. Ten percent of boys also worked in supermarkets. However, even here, such work could not be regarded as gender neutral. None of the three boys who worked in supermarkets were involved in serving customers. Rather their duties concerned stacking shelves and collecting trolleys. The nine girls, on the other hand, were all involved in serving customers. A similar division of labour existed in pub work. The boys who worked in pubs were generally involved ‘pulling pints’ behind the bar while the girls were involved in serving customers at tables. Both girls who worked in pubs felt that their ‘attractive’ appearance contributed to their success in gaining such work. These examples indicate that gender remains an important structuring devise in the organisation of juvenile labour. I do not want to suggest here that young people are passively prepared for their future destinies in the adult labour market by their experience of part-time employment during their school years. As indicated earlier, many

Table 2. Gender and Job Type Boys

Girls

Type of Job

No.

%

No.

%

Construction work Office work Paper round Delivery (coal, milk) Shop assistant Market stall Door-to-door selling Working in a pub Cafe/restaurant Hairdressing Total

6 0 5 8 3 3 2 3 0 0 30

20 0 16 27 10 10 7 10 0 0 100

0 1 0 0 9 0 0 2 6 3 21

0 5 0 0 43 0 0 10 28 14 100

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Madeleine Leonard

of the girls in the sample had high expectations surrounding their intended future occupations. Indeed, most of the boys and girls I interviewed who worked in the juvenile labour market did not envisage themselves as proceeding to undertaking such work on a fulltime basis. Rather, such work was seen as a temporary measure to provide them with the income to satisfy their clothing and other needs in the absence of their parents’ ability to do so. Nonetheless, it remains the case that both boys and girls’ first experience of the labour market was gender specific. This, coupled with their participation in the domestic division of labour within the household, may generate a powerful magnet pulling their future work and employment decisions in gender specific directions.

PUPILS PARTICIPATION IN DOMESTIC WORK WITHIN THE HOUSEHOLD Responsibility for housework and childcare remains a major impediment for many women struggling to achieve equality with their male counterparts. Research has indicated that housework by and large remains women’s work and, more than any other factor, accounts for their continuing subordination in the family (Adkins, 1995; Delphy & Leonard, 1992) The gendered division of labour within the household feeds an ideology based on the notion that women are ‘naturally’ good at certain types of work and paves the way for the occupational segregation of the labour market into male and female jobs (Adkins, 1995; Dex, 1985). Seventy-eight percent of the women who took part in the Northern Ireland Social Attitudes Survey and who did not have a paid job outside the household gave raising children and responsibility for housework and caring for dependent relatives as their reasons for not seeking paid work (Montgomery & Davies, 1991, p. 80). Increased female labour-market participation coupled with increasingly high levels of male unemployment have not led to any significant re-negotiation of the division of labour within the household (Henwood & Miles, 1987; Morris, 1985). When women do engage in work outside the household, they tend to work part-time and combine working with continued primary responsibility for children

and housework. While some men are becoming increasingly involved in domestic tasks, these are rarely a substitute for women’s routine domestic work (Land, 1981). Several studies have indicated that men tend to become involved in household maintenance, gardening, and car repairs (Henwood et al., 1987; Leonard, 1994). Hutson and Jenkins (1989) suggest that such work should be termed household work rather than housework. Since these activities are not as regular as housework, it remains the case that women invest more time and energy in satisfying the needs of the household. Indeed, some research suggests that it is child labour rather than participation by the husband that is used to lighten the burden of married women (Hill & Tisdall, 1997; Morrow, 1994). The household remains the most effective and fundamental mechanism for the socialisation of children. It seems likely to assume that observation of a sexual division of labour between parents may set in motion patterns of behaviour and attitudes that will be reproduced in young people’s own future marriage and household formations. This section examines this issue by indicating that young people are not just observers of a sexual division of labour within the household but are direct participants in such a segregated system. Finn (1984) argues that within working-class families in particular, children are increasingly expected to take some responsibility for the everyday tasks and duties associated with housework. He goes on to suggest that it is within the context of the household that most young people learn about appropriate gender behaviour. For young women in particular, this constitutes a more powerful learning experience than the equality messages transmitted through the school’s mainstream curriculum. All of the young people I interviewed were asked about their involvement in domestic work within the household. Rather than tick responses to a pre-set range of tasks, the question was left deliberately open, encouraging young people to specify what types of household work they engaged in and how frequently they carried out such activities. There are, of course, problems with self-report studies in that they can lead to systematic bias in reporting. Emler and Abrams (1991, p. 20) suggest that males may be less willing to admit to doing ‘female tasks’, as this may contradict their

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast

macho identity. On the other hand, Goodnow (1989) suggests that adolescent males are likely to exaggerate their participation in work within the household. Gaskell (1992, p. 77) also found that girls tended to under-report their involvement in domestic work because their responsibility for such work was so deeply ingrained that it was barely noticed. There is no easy solution to these problems. To some extent, the data provided by the school pupils was checked by the wider survey of one in four households in the estate. Parents supported the sexual division of labour outlined by the pupils. The study backed up other research, which indicates that while young women do more in the household compared to young men, neither do enough to relieve the mother significantly of her responsibility for domestic chores (Hutson & Jenkins, 1989; Leonard, 1980; Solberg, 1990). The data provided by the school pupils revealed clear gender patterns in the distribution of household tasks among members of households. As a general rule, boys were more likely to engage in household maintenance, car repairs, and gardening, while girls were more likely to engage in traditional domestic duties. Fifty boys, 72% of the sample, engaged in painting and decorating and general household maintenance. These latter tasks ranged from fixing door locks to changing light bulbs and electrical plugs. The boys found it difficult to give an accurate estimate of how often they carried out such tasks. The most frequent response was ‘when necessary’, though the majority admitted that they were unlikely to engage in such work any more than a few times per year. A further nine respondents, 13% of the sample, did gardening work at least once per month. By contrast, not 1 of the 53 girls interviewed did any of the tasks so far mentioned. Rather, their main household duties centred on domestic work. Forty-three girls, 83% of the sample, engaged in weekly domestic duties. The most frequent tasks performed were washing dishes, dusting, polishing, making beds, washing, and ironing. Most girls tended to give minimal assistance in doing housework during the week and more extensive help at the weekend. Seventeen boys, 25% of the sample, also engaged in domestic chores. However, the boys’ contribution to domestic work was highly selective. None of the 17 boys, for

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example, did any ironing or washing. Rather, they focused on what they considered to be ‘gender-neutral’ activities. The most common activity was cleaning one’s own bedroom. In each of these cases, the boy had his own bedroom and viewed his bedroom as his private domain. Whereas the girls were often responsible for tidying areas used by all the household, the boys’ responsibility often did not extend outside their own bedroom doors. The sexual division of labour apparent in the Belfast study has also been reported in a number of other studies (Brannen, 1995; Emler & Abrams, 1991; Finn, 1984; Jamieson & Corr, 1990). McRobbie (1978) found in her classic study that the working class girls in her sample spent around 16 hours per week in housework and were not joined in this work by their brothers. Finn (1984, p. 50) suggests that the differential involvement of girls in domestic labour plays a fundamental role in preparing them for future domestic roles from which men will derive material benefits and comforts. In assessing the varying input between girls and boys in their participation in housework, various studies differentiate between self-care and family care (Brannen, 1995). Girls are significantly more likely to do more family care work than boys, while no major differences appear with regard to self-care work. This division of labour was reflected in the research outlined here. Boys’ ability to opt out of family care during their adolescent years may have an impact on their willingness to engage in family care when they form their own households. Hence, the division of labour established in childhood may persist into their adult lives. As Brannen (1995, p. 319) notes, parents may inadequately prepare male children to take on family responsibilities in adulthood. Parents’ expectations regarding contributions to housework may ‘contribute towards, rather than serve to eliminate gender differences’.

CONCLUSION The main aim of this article has been to assess the extent to which gender is an important factor structuring the lives of young people in Northern Ireland about to make the transition from school to work. To some extent, the research backs up conventional expectations.

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The study indicated that gender was the most powerful indicator of involvement in work within the household. Young people grew up in households where tasks were sharply divided between parents according to sex. Their own involvement in household work mirrored this division. The gendered division of labour apparent within household work was also reflected in the types of jobs young people engaged in during their school years. Their preliminary location in the labour market was structured along clear gender lines. Career aspirations were also shaped by gender identities with the more ambitious girls choosing careers within the ‘caring’ professions. However, I do not want to conclude that the girls merely passively responded to pre-set gender specific adult identities. It was clear from the interviews that many young women and, indeed, young men did not uncritically accept these gender roles. Some young women were particularly critical of the sexual division of labour within the household and were determined not to replicate this pattern when they made their own household arrangements. Some of the young men felt that the sexual division of labour would benefit them in their future occupational and domestic arrangements, but, unlike some of their fathers, did not see this as the outcome of ‘natural’ differences between the sexes. In these respects, there were significant differences between the attitudes of parents and children towards appropriate gender roles both within and outside the family. However, Connell (1996) argues that patriarchy is more effective when men see themselves as unwitting beneficiaries rather than direct oppressors. The young people in the Belfast survey have to contend with a number of structural disadvantages over which they have little control and these may affect their future adult roles. These constraints include the social class and economcially disadvantaged background of their parents, lack of local opportunity structures determined by their place of residence, and the level of unemployment prevalent during their period of entry into the labour market. Given these wider structural constraints, challenging gender identities may become submerged under attempts to maintain future individual and household economic viability and conventional gender roles may become more entrenched in the process.

ENDNOTE 1. The term ‘the troubles’ is a popular euphemism used to describe the political and often violent struggle between unionists and nationalists within Northern Ireland and political tensions between Northern Ireland and Britain.

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