Older Women’s Employment Strategies in the Clerical Sector

1. Older Women’s Employment Strategies in the Clerical Sector Marjolaine Roger University of Kent at Canterbury Cultures et Sociétés Urbaines, CNRS, Paris « Women, Identity and Employability » University of Teesside February 7th 2008

2. Outline • Context • Data • Identities and Employability: being a carer and having a career • Educational Capital and Employability • Conclusions

3. Policy • Recent European and British legislation on age discrimination • Two policy trends: keeping older people and women in paid work - by improving their employability and ensuring equality of treatment • Current trend: increasing class inequalities between women (Adkins 2004: 7) 

4. The Significance of Age • Age: no longer a strong predictor of status, location in life course, identity etc. (fragmentation) -> Is age irrelevant? • Older age as an accumulated disadvantage: its burden is sharper for already disadvantaged groups (discrimination and segregation) -> Age intersected with gender, class and ethnicity - what effects in the world of work?

5. Gender and Age • Recent research on intersectionality between gender and age in the work context • Gender and Age at work: women never have the right age for work (Loretto and Duncan 2004) • Does it apply to extremely segregated workplaces like clerical work, where the female gender is expected and normalised? • Is employability related to age more than gender?

6. Clerical Work Clerical work : • Very homogeneous in terms of gender • Very heterogeneous in terms of age • Heterogeneous in terms of class? (from working to middle class - mostly lower/middle middle-class) • Ubiquitous: in very different workspaces A significant employer of women over 50: 1 in 4 older women in employment work in a clerical job

7. Fieldwork • First analyses of data gathered on first two stages of fieldwork in 2006-2007 • 22 semi-structured interviews and notes from short moments of observation • Women over 50 working in two organisations: • University in SE England; • Hospital in SE England; • Two of the largest local employers • Voluntary participation

8. Sample • 22 interviews: 16 (university) + 6 (hospital) • All white and British • All heterosexual - 14 married; 3 with partners; 4 separated or divorced; 1 widowed. • All but one have children • Aged from 51 to 69

9. Identities: Gender, Age and Class • Age and generation structure gender and class at work • Available bodies: age-sensitive feminine bodily performances • Emphasis on being ‘available’ both to others and to a great variety of tasks and duties • Provide them with: visibility, meaning, belonging, satisfaction which is often denied to a traditionally invisible population: female, older, subaltern occupation

10. Identities in Gendered and Classed Spaces • A highly segregated workspace • Balanced with other spaces which give a different meaning to their occupation and all provide meaningful senses of self (Halford and Leonard, 2006: 60-63). • These women’s identities and class locations are ‘in-between’ various spaces. • Gendered and Classed Geographies: more local geographies and trajectories

11. Career and Caring Selves • Multiple sites for the construction of a caring self: at work, for families and in voluntary work • Emotional v Economic Capital: their investment in caring (at work and outside work) restricts their mobility in social and geographical space (Skeggs, 1997) Specificity of emotional capital: it is ‘all about investments in others rather than the self – the one capital that is used up in interaction with others and is for the benefit of others’ (Reay 2004: 71)

12. Motherhood and Employability • Life organised around family life; career breaks • Return to work with varying success • Downward mobility: compensatory discourses • Upward mobility: motherhood is not seen as central to their working lives in their narratives

13. Education and Employability • Education usually viewed for the enhancement of economic capital and for improved employability but it has a different value for these older women • Educational levels: most of them have O’levels and secretarial qualifications; in the university, 4 of them have a degree (3 of them taken recently) - 3 of them have the lowest positions/grades => Mismatch between older female bodies and the translation of educational capital into economic capital

14. Different Value of Educational Capital Example of women with ‘later’ degrees: • Remained in same local clerical labour market after getting the degree • Did not use their new qualifications in their job search • Use-value rather than exchange-value of degree => Cultural capital is not transformed into symbolic capital (Bourdieu in Skeggs, 1997)

15. Conclusions • These older women in clerical work negotiate between ‘caring’ and ‘career’ selves - building a coherent self across different spaces of personal engagement • Performance of older femininity in a specific (occupational and geographical) context means specific investments in gender and age-typed capitals. • The uses of care and education confirm the limited possibilities women have to convert some capitals they have gained into other types (Reay 2004: 60). • Employability is not enhanced inside or outside the clerical sector by investments in motherhood nor in education.

16. References Adkins, Lisa (2004) “Introduction: Feminism, Bourdieu and after”, in Adkins and Skeggs, Feminism after Bourdieu, Oxford: Blackwell, pp.3-18 Halford Susan and Leonard, P. (2006) Negotiating Gendered Identities at Work: Place, Space and Time, Basingstoke: Palgrave Loretto, Wendy and Duncan, C. (2004) “Never the Right Age? Gender and Age-Based Discrimination in Employment”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol.11, N°1, 95-115 McDowell, Linda (1997) Capital Culture, Gender at Work in the City, Oxford: Blackwell Reay, Diane (2004) “Gendering Bourdieu’s concept of capitals? Emotional capital, women and social class”, in Adkins and Skeggs, Feminism after Bourdieu, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 57-74 Skeggs, Beverley (1997) Formations of Class and Gender, Becoming Respectable, London: Sage