Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 619–630, 1999Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science LtdPrinted in the USA. All rights reserved

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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 theages of 15 and 18 from a Catholic working-class area characterised by high, long-term unemployment lo-cated in Belfast. It includes further research carried out in 1998. The article focuses on three main as-pects of young people’s lives: their intended career aspirations, their involvement in term-time employ-ment while at school and their participation in paid work within the household. The article suggests thatthe transition from school to work plays a crucial role in the reproduction of gender relations. The arti-cle demonstrates the ways in which young people at times accept and at other times challenge taken-for-granted assumptions regarding traditional gender stereotypes. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rightsreserved.

Outdated notions that a woman’s anatomy,through her capacity to bear children, deter-mined the shape of her entire life have beenreplaced by complex debates as to how differ-ent social structures interact to produce the di-versity of patterns of gender relations that areto be found across different societies and overtime. There is general agreement that over thepast two decades, the position of women inwestern industrial societies has greatly im-proved (Adkins, 1995; Dowds, Devine, &Breen, 1997; Trewsdale, McLaughlin, & Mc-Cay, 1999). This development has been facili-tated by the increasing participation of womenin paid employment outside the household andby legislative changes in the United Kingdom,such as the Sex Discrimination Act and theEqual Pay Act. Hence, gender is regarded as aless constraining influence than it was a gener-ation ago. Young people, particularly girls, areregarded as less likely to replicate the house-hold patterns of their parents. As beneficiariesof the transformations of the previous two de-cades, they are more likely to be able to exer-cise non-gendered choices in terms of theirparticipation in household work, their careeraspirations and their participation in paid em-ployment. However, is this the case? Throughinterviews with 69 boys and 53 girls, aged be-tween 15 and 18 years of age, from one work-

ing-class Catholic estate in West Belfast, I in-tend to examine some of these assumptions.The article will look at three aspects of theseyoung people’s lives: their intended career as-pirations on leaving school; their involvementin paid employment while at school, and theirparticipation in domestic work within thehousehold. The article suggests that whileyoung people from the area display a numberof characteristics which indicate the reproduc-tion of existing patterns of social differentia-tion and inequality based on gender, these areby no means fixed. Rather, the young men andwomen who took part in the study actively ne-gotiated gender roles and at times challengedtaken-for-granted gender identities.

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The school pupils were interviewed as part of awider study of the economic activity of house-holds in the area, which was carried out by theauthor (Leonard, 1994). The estate was delib-erately chosen as it represented one of thepeak unemployment areas in Northern Irelandand was identified as the worse estate withinCatholic West Belfast in terms of unemploy-ment levels, poor housing and ill-health (Boal,Doherty, & Pringle, 1974; Doherty, 1977). Asurvey, carried out between 1989 and 1990, of

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married couples and single people living in onein four households in the area revealed veryhigh levels of unemployment (Leonard, 1994).Only 26% of the men interviewed were in for-mal employment, mainly in unskilled manualwork. Only 22% of the women interviewedwere formally employed. Three quarters ofthese women worked in part-time, low-statusservice occupations. Hence, the occupations ofadult men and women from the estate werevery gender specific. The study revealed thatthe high male unemployment rate had littleimpact on the participation of men in domesticwork within the household. The women in thearea, regardless of whether they had access topaid employment outside the home, weremainly responsible for domestic work andchildcare. Hence, young people growing up inthese households were presented with verytraditional gender-specific role models.

The wider survey was concerned with ex-amining the range of work practices prevalenton the estate including: informal economywork, voluntary work, and self-provisioningwithin households. I felt that interviewingschool pupils about to enter the labour marketwould provide a fuller picture of the range ofeconomic activities pursued by inhabitants ofthe estate and illuminate some of the problemsfacing girls in particular as they make voca-tional decisions and prepare themselves forthe world of work. All of the pupils inter-viewed attended single-sex secondary schoolscatering to the area. The pupils were inter-viewed separately in the schools that they at-tended and each interview lasted approxi-mately 1 hour. The pupils represented analmost total sample of school pupils betweenthe ages of 15 and 18 from the area. The onlypupils excluded were the small number of boysand girls who were absent from school duringthe period of the interviews. The article arguesthat while these pupils have been educated in acontext which increasingly emphasises equalopportunities, these school-based factors havelittle influence compared to those of the homeand workplace, which remain in line with tra-ditional gender stereotypes.

CAREER ASPIRATIONS

Sociologists have long been concerned withexamining the gender-specific nature of the la-

bour market (Adkins, 1995; Charles, 1993;Crowley, 1997; Smyth, 1997). Their investiga-tions have highlighted the concentration ofwomen within a very narrow range of occupa-tional groups. By contrast, men are spreadthroughout a much wider range of occupa-tions. In general terms, women are confinedboth to lower-grade jobs (vertical segregation)and to different jobs from men (horizontal seg-regation). The areas of employment in whichwomen are concentrated are cleaning, nursing,teaching, and other occupations classified un-der the so-called `helping’ professions. It is al-most as if the domestic role of looking afterothers is transferred to the work situation. Ed-ucation plays a major role in preparing youngmen and women for their later roles in societyand, therefore, helps to maintain a division oflabour based on sexual differences. As late as1963, the Newsom Report, which informed ed-ucational policy in Northern Ireland statedthat:

We try to educate girls into becoming imita-tion men and as a result we are wasting andfrustrating their qualities of womanhood atgreat expense to the community . . . our girlsshould be educated in terms of their main so-cial function which is to make for them-selves, their children and their husbands a se-cure and comfortable home and to bemothers. (Newsom Report, 1963, p. 3)

Hence, it is unsurprising that schools conven-tionally steered girls into predictable traditionaldirections. However, the UK 1988 EducationAct fundamentally reformed the educationalsystem requiring for the first time for boys andgirls to be offered the same curriculum. TheNorthern Ireland Curriculum introduced in 1989addressed the perceived narrowness of the ex-isting school curriculum, particularly the un-der-achievement of 16-year-old school pupils,by making science a compulsory subject andestablishing a renewed emphasis on basic skills(Caul, 1993). The girls who took part in thisstudy were among the first to benefit from thesechanges in the curriculum. However, given thesestandardised changes it is still the case that girlsremain unwilling to enter traditional male-dom-inated occupations (Carey, 1997). Northern Irishwomen tend to be employed in traditional gen-dered areas of employment, usually on a low-paid, part-time basis (Trewsdale, 1992). Carey

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast 621

(1997) argues that if the numbers of womenand girls currently engaged in training in non-traditional skills are representative of futuredevelopments, then change in the future islikely to remain sluggish. Drawing on a reportby the Training and Employment Agency,Northern Ireland’s largest and most importantcentralised training organisation, Carey indi-cates that of the 1,614 trainees across NorthernIreland’s 11 Training Centres, a mere 1% werewomen (Carey, 1997, p. 109). Indeed, careers’advisers at the single-sex girls’ school in thisstudy seemed more concerned with raising thepupils’ class expectations in steering them to-wards perceived middle-class occupations, suchas teaching and nursing, while keeping the tra-ditional gender-specific nature of such occupa-tions intact.

All the interviewees were asked about theircareer intentions on leaving school. Of course,I am aware of the limitations of this approach,in that career intentions may remain aspira-tions. Roberts (1975) suggests that individualsrarely choose jobs, they simply take what isavailable. This is backed up by research car-ried out in 1995 by Sheenan and Tomlinson(1999) into the job search strategies of unem-ployed people in West Belfast. Over half of therespondents who took part in their researchstated that they would consider any job thatwas available. The economic stagnation ofNorthern Ireland and, in particular, regionssuch as West Belfast, may pose enormous hur-dles to young people seeking any type of em-ployment. Moreover, career intentions maynot remain fixed but may change in the light ofeducational qualifications obtained and formaland informal job opportunities. The inabilityto obtain employment in one’s intended occu-pation may lead to lower job expectations. Al-ternatively, the reality of working in one’s in-tended occupation may turn out very differentlyfrom that expected and may lead young peopleto raise or change their occupational inten-tions. Nonetheless, the aspirations of youngpeople about to enter the labour market pro-vide an interesting indication of the extent towhich intended career plans remain influencedby gender.

Table 1 provides a breakdown of the careeraspirations of the girls and boys and indicatesthat gender continues to play an importantrole in shaping young people’s future occupa-tional intentions. The list of occupational aspi-

rations mentioned by the girls mirrors the gen-der-based divisions of labour which operate inthe wider society. Several of the girls’ occupa-tional intentions centred around jobs con-nected with caring for others. Throughout theinterviews, the girls indicated that they feltthat more job satisfaction could be gainedfrom helping other people and this provided amajor motivation for their occupationalchoices. Many girls stated that they wanted todo something worthwhile for society and sawtheir occupational aspirations in that light.

Just over one third of the girls in the samplesaw 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 oftenfavoured clerical work because they had unre-alistically glamorised impressions of what itentailed. They viewed clerical work as givingthem an opportunity to dress up and meet peo-ple, when in reality it generally involved verymenial, monotonous, and increasingly deskilledwork. While this study is quite dated, nonethe-less, research by Cockburn (1991) and Pringle(1989) indicate that stereotypical images ofwomen’s sexuality continue to dominate as-pects of the labour market. In her study of sec-retaries, Pringle (1989) illustrates how rela-tionships between bosses and secretaries areoften based on sexual and family imagery. Thesecretary acts as mother, wife, and paid ser-vant who must protect, provide emotional sup-

Table 1. Career Aspirations By Gender

Boys Girls

Occupation No. % No. %

Tertiary education 31 45 6 11Youth training scheme 14 20 1 2Clerical work 0 0 19 35Trade 3 4 0 0Working with children 0 0 8 15Teaching 0 0 3 6Nursing 0 0 5 9Social work 0 0 2 4Air hostess 0 0 1 2Catering 0 0 2 4Nun 0 0 1 2Hairdresser 0 0 1 2Shop assistant 0 0 1 2Any job 21 31 3 6Total 69 100 53 100

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Madeleine Leonard

port, and estimate the needs of the boss. Manyyoung women in Northern Ireland continue toenter clerical occupations. Data from the 1991Northern Ireland Census Economic ActivityReport indicated that the majority of economi-cally active women over the age of 16 wereemployed in clerical and secretarial occupa-tions. This sexual division of labour was alsoapparent in labour market statistics collectedby the Northern Ireland Statistics and Re-search Agency in 1997. When the single-sexgirls’ school was first visited in 1991, careers’teachers put a lot of effort into preparing pu-pils for clerical careers, and typing and otheroffice skills were often compulsory subjects forpupils from the fourth year onward. Indeed,the pupils in the top stream classes within theschool, following an academic route comprisedof GCSE and A levels were encouraged to alsolearn typing to have ‘something to fall back on’in case their academic aspirations failed to ma-terialise. A return visit to the school in 1998 tolook at the term-time employment experiencesof 15-year-old school pupils revealed less em-phasis being placed on encouraging girls toamalgamate academic choices with secretarialcourses (Leonard, 1999). However, discussionswith the one of the careers’ teachers in theschool indicated that only the most academi-cally able pupils were encouraged to follow apurely academic path. Less academically ablegirls were still encouraged to develop officeskills with word-processing and computerskills courses replacing the original focus ontyping courses.

Only 11% of girls in the sample, as com-pared to 45% of boys, intended to undertakesome form of tertiary education. Lees (1993)points out that the first thing to emphasiseabout the dynamics of sexism is the need tolook beyond the formal organisation of theschool as an institution to the cultural and so-cial interaction that goes on in and aroundschool life. Traditionally, girls receive all sortsof contradictory messages about whether theirfuture lies in marriage combined perhaps withlow-status, low-paid work or a career. Girlswho opt for a career are often encouraged tochoose one which will effectively allow themto combine work demands with responsibilityfor a home and family. Hence, even the girlswho intended to pursue careers saw them-selves as married within 5 years time and feltthat their career needs should be subordinate

to that of their commitments to newly formedfamilies. Like the females interviewed byChisholm and du Bois-Reymond (1993) inBritain, they did not appreciate the difficul-ties associated with maintaining continuousand rewarding employment once they havechildren.

On the other hand, I do not want to presentan overly negative portrait of the girls’ gen-dered occupational intentions. On a positivenote, the girls were very clear about what typesof occupations they hoped to follow, and thiscontrasted starkly with the indecision thatcharacterised the boys’ responses. Just underhalf of the boys in the sample intended to en-ter some form of tertiary education. However,the majority of this group were unable to tellme what types of courses they would like topursue or what specific occupation they had inmind. By contrast, the girls were very specificabout the courses they hoped to pursue andthe likely occupations these qualificationswould provide them with access to. This mayof course reflect changes in the labour marketin Northern Ireland and the impact of the‘troubles’

1

on the economy. The ‘troubles’have reduced inward investment and have costthe province jobs in industry and manufactur-ing, but they have also led to an expansion ofjobs in the public sector (Simpson, 1996).Hence, the traditional industries employingmen have been declining while the industriesmost likely to employ women have been ex-panding. While this may have a knock-on effecton school pupils’ perceived career opportuni-ties, nonetheless, the detailed career intentionsof the girls should not be under-rated. Theirdetermination to obtain qualifications relatedto specific careers may enable them to chal-lenge more effectively traditional gender ste-reotypical images of their roles in later lifewhen they form their own families.

In attempting to deal with Northern Ire-land’s unemployment problem, the Britishgovernment developed a number of trainingschemes targeted at school leavers. A variationon the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) estab-lished in Britain in the early 1980s was intro-duced in Northern Ireland in September 1982entitled the Youth Training Programme (YTP).However, participation rates in training schemesvary according to gender. Shuttleworth (1994,p. 24) found that only 15% of Catholic femalesparticipated in YTP courses, as compared to

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast 623

28% of Catholic males. This gender disparitywas even more prominent among the boys andgirls I interviewed. One fifth of the boys hopedto enter a YTP, compared to only 2% of thegirls. To some extent the boys’ intentions toembark on a training scheme were motivatedby lack of alternatives. As in the rest of theUnited Kingdom, government training schemesare compulsory for those leaving school at 16without any formal employment, and youngpeople who refuse to enter training schemesmay forfeit their entitlement to unemploymentbenefit. Finn’s (1985) research in Britain out-lined young people’s realistic yet pessimisticassessment of the benefits of youth trainingschemes. Many young people viewed youthtraining schemes as supplying employers witha cheap, easily exploitable workforce. The per-sistence of mass youth unemployment under-mines the goal of youth training schemes toprepare young people effectively for the worldof work. Trainees continue to enter a de-pressed labour market where they face compe-tition from unemployed adults and an annualnew batch of subsidised school leavers. Fromher research in Britain, Wickham (1985) sug-gests that many youth training schemes do notcater to the specific needs of girls and thosethat do perpetuate pre-existing stereotypesand divisions. Most of the boys and girls I in-terviewed held negative images of youth train-ing schemes. However, while girls felt theycould resist entry to such training schemes byobtaining jobs in the service sector, boys, inthe absence of perceived job opportunities forworking-class males, contemplated entry totraining schemes as a prelude to qualifying forunemployment benefit.

The pessimism of the boys in the sample isreflected in the high number who had no spe-cific employment intention and who statedthat ‘any job will do’. Thirty-one percent of theboys chose this option, compared to only 6%of the girls. Only 4% of boys mentioned atrade as a possible occupation. This was basedon their perceptions of job opportunities inWest Belfast, where even apprenticeships nowlie in the realm of fantasy. The influence of lo-cal labour markets on young people’s occupa-tional intentions and opportunities has longbeen recognised. Ashton, Maguire, and Spils-bury (1988) suggest that local labour marketsare of fundamental importance in affecting notjust the chances of an individual obtaining

work, but also the type of job available, thechances of moving between jobs and the lengthof time spent unemployed. Hence, the boys’indecisive responses to questions concerningtheir future occupational intentions may be re-lated to their realistic assessment regarding thelack of employment opportunities in the locallabour market.

The aspirations of the girls who took part inthe study seemed inconsistent with local la-bour market opportunities. The mothers of thepupils I interviewed who worked outside thehousehold were employed in a range of low-grade, low-status, part-time occupations in-cluding cleaners, dinner-ladies, shop assistants,and caterers. Several of the girls aspired to oc-cupations of a higher status than that of theirmothers’ generation. While these occupationalintentions remained gender specific, nonethe-less they contained career development poten-tial unlike the unskilled occupations that char-acterised their mothers’ working lives. Thelikelihood of the girls achieving their occupa-tional aspirations lay outside the scope of thisstudy, and because of the anonymous nature ofthe survey (imposed as a pre-condition by theprincipals who consented to granting me ac-cess to pupils in their schools), no follow-upstudy was possible. However, Bates (1993)suggests that in areas characterised by jobscarcity and high unemployment, the struc-tural barriers of class and gender come moreforcibly into play in selection processes so thatclass-gendered divisions of labour become re-inforced. Hence, given the growing stagnationof the Northern Ireland economy and the sur-plus labour power available, the working-classgirls from the disadvantaged Catholic commu-nity selected for the study may face consider-able hurdles in attempting to realise their oc-cupational aspirations.

Of course, many school pupils do not haveto leave school to obtain their first labour mar-ket experience. Part-time jobs for school pu-pils is a growing phenomena and the next sec-tion will examine the extent to which such jobsare structured along gender lines.

PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT AMONG SCHOOL PUPILS

Part-time work plays a major role in theNorthern Ireland economy. The collapse ofNorthern Ireland’s traditional industries, such

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as shipbuilding and manufacturing, has beenaccompanied by a rapid expansion in the ser-vice sector (Simpson, 1996). However, this ex-pansion has not been large enough to compen-sate for losses in the traditional industries andhas mainly resulted in the creation of low-paid,part-time work opportunities for women. Irishwomen tend to leave the labour market whenthey have a child and return to work in a part-time capacity once their children reach schoolage (Coakley, 1997; Trewsdale et al., 1999).This contrasts with the situation in NorthAmerica and much of Europe where womenare more likely to take maternity leave andcontinue with their full-time job (Dex & Shaw,1986; Dex & Walters, 1989; Fagan & Rubery,1996). Lack of adequate childcare facilities andan ideology that places the responsibility forchildcare on to the mother’s shoulders contin-ues to pose a serious impediment to the em-ployment prospects of women in Northern Ire-land (Davies & McLaughlin, 1991; Roulston,1989). About 40% of women who have a paidjob outside the home in Northern Ireland,work part-time (Montgomery & Davies, 1991,p. 75; Trewsdale et al., 1999, p. 3). Comparedto Britain, a higher proportion of women whowork part-time in Northern Ireland work lessthan 16 hours per week and are thus excludedfrom minimum employment rights (McLaugh-lin, Trewsdale, & McCay, 1999, p. 9).

The significance of part-time work in thelives of working adult women has been welldocumented. What has not received the sameattention is the extent to which part-time workplays a part in the lives of young people aboutto enter the mainstream labour market. Thisneglect is partly due to the way in which statis-tics on the economic activity of people in theUnited Kingdom are collected. Labour ForceSurveys use the term ‘usual’ economic activityto categorise respondents’ economic status.This results in the category of ‘full-time stu-dent’ being given precedence over ‘in employ-ment’, and renders those who do part-timework while still at school as invisible workers.It is also worth mentioning here that one in six(17%) adult women employees in NorthernIreland earn less than the weekly lower earn-ings limit (LEL), as compared to 3% of adultmen. The LEL is the threshold below whichNational Insurance contributions are not paidand, therefore, entitlement to a range of con-tributory benefits is severely restricted (Mc-

Cay, McLaughlin, & Trewsdale, 1999, p. 4).Hence, because of their lower earnings, thereis a greater tendency for women compared tomen to be incorrectly categorised as ‘economi-cally inactive’.

All of the pupils who took part in the sur-vey were asked whether they engaged in anypaid employment outside school hours. Therewas very little difference in participation ratesbetween girls and boys. Thirty boys, 44% ofthe sample and 21 girls, 40% of the sample,were involved in part-time work. Of thoseboys 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 thegirls in part-time employment, 38% of thesample, were under 16 years of age, while 13(62%) were over 16 years of age. This age stip-ulation is important, as young people in theUnited Kingdom must be aged 16 before theyqualify for a National Insurance number. Theemployment of young people under 16 is re-stricted by legislation which limits the amountof hours they can work per week and the typesof work they can engage in. In many instances,these legislative requirements were not ad-hered to. Indeed, part-time employment foryoung people while still at school was charac-terised by exploitative wages and working con-ditions. Alongside married women, youngpeople who are still at school prove very at-tractive to employers seeking a flexible andcheap labour force. Young people can be paidless than the adult rate and in many instancesemployers can evade their usual employmentobligations through the usage of their labour.

The research revealed very exploitativehourly wage rates for school pupils and no sig-nificant pattern emerged between the sexes.Both were equally exploited in the juvenile la-bour market. Almost one third of both boys andgirls were paid £1 or under per hour. While thisstudy was carried out in 1991 and was limited toone specific Catholic working-class housing es-tate, research carried out by the author intoterm-time employment among pupils drawnfrom the whole of the Belfast area in 1998 con-firmed the tendency for school pupils to bepaid exploitative wage rates. In this latterstudy, 12% of the sample earned £1 or underper hour and 65% earned under the recom-mended £3 minimum wage (Leonard, 1999).

The majority of the sample worked approx-imately 10 hours per week. While these hours

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast 625

may appear insignificant, Hobbs and McKech-nie (1998) point out that if these hours wereadded to the normal school week of around 30hours (excluding the amount of time spent do-ing homework), then most of the youngsterswould probably be working longer hours thanthose in the adult labour market. The lownumber of hours coupled with the wage ratesoutlined above meant that part-time workrarely generated high levels of weekly income.However, since many of the young workerscame from households where the adults wereunemployed, out of school earnings providedthem with the opportunity to buy the teenagecommodities their parents could not afford.

The previous discussion indicates that manyyoung people first confront and experience thesocial and economic relations of wage labourprior to leaving school. This practice is not pe-culiar to Northern Ireland. A number of recentstudies have indicated that term-time employ-ment is a normal experience for an increasingnumber of school pupils, particularly aroundthe ages of 14 to 16 (McKechnie, Hobbs, &Lindsay, 1997; Middleton, Shropshire, & Cor-den, 1998; O’Donnell & White, 1998). TheBelfast survey revealed no significant dispari-ties between boys and girls in terms of the ageat which they commenced work, the weeklynumber of hours worked or hourly rates ofpay. However, significant patterns emerged inthe types of work undertaken by boys andgirls. In particular, the research indicated thatthe juvenile labour market like the adult la-bour market was divided along gender lines.

Table 2 presents a breakdown of the varietyof jobs the boys and girls engaged in and indi-cates that gender differences are very apparentin this form of wage labour. The juvenile la-bour market was both vertically and horizon-tally segregated along gender lines. Construc-tion work tended to be a male domain whilehairdressing and the catering industry tendedto attract women workers. A substantial num-ber of the juvenile occupations involved sellingitems to others. However, there were signifi-cant differences between the sexes in the na-ture and location of such work. Boys were in-volved in a much more diverse range ofoccupations involving selling, including: run-ning market stalls; engaging in door-to-doorselling; delivering coal, milk, and newspapersas well as shop work. In many cases, these jobsdemanded considerable physical strength, for

example, in the lifting of bags of coal andcrates of milk. The language used to describethe persons associated with delivery was par-ticularly revealing as to how such work isviewed as masculine. Hence, the male deliveryworkers were helping the

coalman

and the

milkman.

Boys also had to cope with the out-door elements, as door-to-door selling, run-ning market stalls, delivery work, and indeed,the construction industry, involved outsidework. Girls, by contrast, were involved in sell-ing within shops, mainly supermarket stores.This type of employment accounted for almosthalf of the types of jobs for girls in the sample.Ten percent of boys also worked in supermar-kets. However, even here, such work could notbe regarded as gender neutral. None of thethree boys who worked in supermarkets wereinvolved in serving customers. Rather their du-ties concerned stacking shelves and collectingtrolleys. The nine girls, on the other hand,were all involved in serving customers. A simi-lar division of labour existed in pub work. Theboys who worked in pubs were generally in-volved ‘pulling pints’ behind the bar while thegirls were involved in serving customers at ta-bles. Both girls who worked in pubs felt thattheir ‘attractive’ appearance contributed totheir success in gaining such work. These ex-amples indicate that gender remains an impor-tant structuring devise in the organisation ofjuvenile labour.

I do not want to suggest here that youngpeople are passively prepared for their futuredestinies in the adult labour market by theirexperience of part-time employment duringtheir school years. As indicated earlier, many

Table 2. Gender and Job Type

Boys Girls

Type of Job No. % No. %

Construction work 6 20 0 0Office work 0 0 1 5Paper round 5 16 0 0Delivery (coal, milk) 8 27 0 0Shop assistant 3 10 9 43Market stall 3 10 0 0Door-to-door selling 2 7 0 0Working in a pub 3 10 2 10Cafe/restaurant 0 0 6 28Hairdressing 0 0 3 14Total 30 100 21 100

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Madeleine Leonard

of the girls in the sample had high expectationssurrounding their intended future occupations.Indeed, most of the boys and girls I inter-viewed who worked in the juvenile labourmarket did not envisage themselves as pro-ceeding to undertaking such work on a full-time basis. Rather, such work was seen as atemporary measure to provide them with theincome to satisfy their clothing and otherneeds in the absence of their parents’ ability todo so. Nonetheless, it remains the case thatboth boys and girls’ first experience of the la-bour market was gender specific. This, coupledwith their participation in the domestic divi-sion of labour within the household, may gen-erate a powerful magnet pulling their futurework and employment decisions in gender spe-cific directions.

PUPILS PARTICIPATION IN DOMESTIC WORK WITHIN THE HOUSEHOLD

Responsibility for housework and childcare re-mains a major impediment for many womenstruggling to achieve equality with their malecounterparts. Research has indicated thathousework by and large remains women’swork and, more than any other factor, ac-counts for their continuing subordination inthe family (Adkins, 1995; Delphy & Leonard,1992) The gendered division of labour withinthe household feeds an ideology based on thenotion that women are ‘naturally’ good at cer-tain types of work and paves the way for theoccupational segregation of the labour marketinto male and female jobs (Adkins, 1995; Dex,1985). Seventy-eight percent of the womenwho took part in the Northern Ireland SocialAttitudes Survey and who did not have a paidjob outside the household gave raising chil-dren and responsibility for housework and car-ing for dependent relatives as their reasons fornot seeking paid work (Montgomery &Davies, 1991, p. 80).

Increased female labour-market participa-tion coupled with increasingly high levels ofmale unemployment have not led to any signif-icant re-negotiation of the division of labourwithin the household (Henwood & Miles,1987; Morris, 1985). When women do engagein work outside the household, they tend towork part-time and combine working withcontinued primary responsibility for children

and housework. While some men are becom-ing increasingly involved in domestic tasks,these are rarely a substitute for women’s rou-tine domestic work (Land, 1981). Severalstudies have indicated that men tend to be-come involved in household maintenance, gar-dening, 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. Sincethese activities are not as regular as house-work, it remains the case that women investmore time and energy in satisfying the needsof the household. Indeed, some research sug-gests that it is child labour rather than partici-pation by the husband that is used to lightenthe burden of married women (Hill & Tisdall,1997; Morrow, 1994).

The household remains the most effectiveand fundamental mechanism for the socialisa-tion of children. It seems likely to assume thatobservation of a sexual division of labour be-tween parents may set in motion patterns ofbehaviour and attitudes that will be repro-duced in young people’s own future marriageand household formations. This section exam-ines this issue by indicating that young peopleare not just observers of a sexual division of la-bour within the household but are direct par-ticipants in such a segregated system. Finn(1984) argues that within working-class fami-lies in particular, children are increasingly ex-pected to take some responsibility for the ev-eryday tasks and duties associated withhousework. He goes on to suggest that it iswithin the context of the household that mostyoung people learn about appropriate genderbehaviour. For young women in particular,this constitutes a more powerful learning expe-rience than the equality messages transmittedthrough the school’s mainstream curriculum.

All of the young people I interviewed wereasked about their involvement in domesticwork within the household. Rather than tickresponses to a pre-set range of tasks, the ques-tion was left deliberately open, encouragingyoung people to specify what types of house-hold work they engaged in and how frequentlythey carried out such activities. There are, ofcourse, problems with self-report studies inthat they can lead to systematic bias in report-ing. Emler and Abrams (1991, p. 20) suggestthat males may be less willing to admit to do-ing ‘female tasks’, as this may contradict their

Gender and School to Work Transition in Belfast 627

macho identity. On the other hand, Goodnow(1989) suggests that adolescent males arelikely to exaggerate their participation in workwithin the household. Gaskell (1992, p. 77)also found that girls tended to under-reporttheir involvement in domestic work becausetheir responsibility for such work was sodeeply ingrained that it was barely noticed.There is no easy solution to these problems.To some extent, the data provided by theschool pupils was checked by the wider surveyof one in four households in the estate. Parentssupported the sexual division of labour out-lined by the pupils. The study backed up otherresearch, which indicates that while youngwomen do more in the household compared toyoung men, neither do enough to relieve themother significantly of her responsibility fordomestic chores (Hutson & Jenkins, 1989;Leonard, 1980; Solberg, 1990).

The data provided by the school pupils re-vealed clear gender patterns in the distributionof household tasks among members of house-holds. As a general rule, boys were more likelyto engage in household maintenance, car re-pairs, and gardening, while girls were morelikely to engage in traditional domestic duties.Fifty boys, 72% of the sample, engaged inpainting and decorating and general house-hold maintenance. These latter tasks rangedfrom fixing door locks to changing light bulbsand electrical plugs. The boys found it difficultto give an accurate estimate of how often theycarried out such tasks. The most frequent re-sponse was ‘when necessary’, though the ma-jority admitted that they were unlikely to en-gage in such work any more than a few timesper year. A further nine respondents, 13% ofthe sample, did gardening work at least onceper month.

By contrast, not 1 of the 53 girls intervieweddid any of the tasks so far mentioned. Rather,their main household duties centred on do-mestic work. Forty-three girls, 83% of thesample, engaged in weekly domestic duties.The most frequent tasks performed werewashing dishes, dusting, polishing, makingbeds, washing, and ironing. Most girls tendedto give minimal assistance in doing houseworkduring the week and more extensive help atthe weekend. Seventeen boys, 25% of the sam-ple, also engaged in domestic chores. How-ever, the boys’ contribution to domestic workwas highly selective. None of the 17 boys, for

example, did any ironing or washing. Rather,they focused on what they considered to be‘gender-neutral’ activities. The most commonactivity was cleaning one’s own bedroom. Ineach of these cases, the boy had his own bed-room and viewed his bedroom as his privatedomain. Whereas the girls were often respon-sible for tidying areas used by all the house-hold, the boys’ responsibility often did not ex-tend outside their own bedroom doors.

The sexual division of labour apparent inthe Belfast study has also been reported in anumber of other studies (Brannen, 1995; Em-ler & Abrams, 1991; Finn, 1984; Jamieson &Corr, 1990). McRobbie (1978) found in herclassic study that the working class girls in hersample spent around 16 hours per week inhousework and were not joined in this work bytheir brothers. Finn (1984, p. 50) suggests thatthe differential involvement of girls in domes-tic labour plays a fundamental role in prepar-ing them for future domestic roles from whichmen will derive material benefits and com-forts. In assessing the varying input betweengirls and boys in their participation in house-work, various studies differentiate betweenself-care and family care (Brannen, 1995).Girls are significantly more likely to do morefamily care work than boys, while no majordifferences appear with regard to self-carework. This division of labour was reflected inthe research outlined here. Boys’ ability to optout of family care during their adolescentyears may have an impact on their willingnessto engage in family care when they form theirown households. Hence, the division of labourestablished in childhood may persist into theiradult lives. As Brannen (1995, p. 319) notes,parents may inadequately prepare male chil-dren to take on family responsibilities in adult-hood. Parents’ expectations regarding contri-butions to housework may ‘contribute towards,rather than serve to eliminate gender differ-ences’.

CONCLUSION

The main aim of this article has been to assessthe extent to which gender is an important fac-tor structuring the lives of young people inNorthern Ireland about to make the transitionfrom school to work. To some extent, the re-search backs up conventional expectations.

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The study indicated that gender was the mostpowerful indicator of involvement in workwithin the household. Young people grew upin households where tasks were sharply di-vided between parents according to sex. Theirown involvement in household work mirroredthis division. The gendered division of labourapparent within household work was also re-flected in the types of jobs young people en-gaged in during their school years. Their pre-liminary location in the labour market wasstructured along clear gender lines. Career as-pirations were also shaped by gender identitieswith the more ambitious girls choosing careerswithin the ‘caring’ professions.

However, I do not want to conclude thatthe girls merely passively responded to pre-setgender specific adult identities. It was clearfrom the interviews that many young womenand, indeed, young men did not uncritically ac-cept these gender roles. Some young womenwere particularly critical of the sexual divisionof labour within the household and were de-termined not to replicate this pattern whenthey made their own household arrangements.Some of the young men felt that the sexual di-vision of labour would benefit them in their fu-ture occupational and domestic arrangements,but, unlike some of their fathers, did not seethis as the outcome of ‘natural’ differences be-tween the sexes. In these respects, there weresignificant differences between the attitudes ofparents and children towards appropriate gen-der roles both within and outside the family.However, Connell (1996) argues that patriar-chy is more effective when men see themselvesas unwitting beneficiaries rather than directoppressors.

The young people in the Belfast surveyhave to contend with a number of structuraldisadvantages over which they have little con-trol and these may affect their future adultroles. These constraints include the social classand economcially disadvantaged backgroundof their parents, lack of local opportunitystructures determined by their place of resi-dence, and the level of unemployment preva-lent during their period of entry into the la-bour market. Given these wider structuralconstraints, challenging gender identities maybecome submerged under attempts to main-tain future individual and household economicviability and conventional gender roles maybecome more entrenched in the process.

ENDNOTE

1. The term ‘the troubles’ is a popular euphemism used todescribe the political and often violent struggle betweenunionists and nationalists within Northern Ireland andpolitical tensions between Northern Ireland and Britain.

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