Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
This is a qualitative data collection. The research adopted a multi-dimensional approach to explore women's lives (n=97) in the North East of England in the context of de-industrialisation and the transition to a service sector, leisure based economy. It investigated the emergence of 'new' femininities in a situation of industrial 'degeneration' and regeneration, investigating what has hitherto been under-researched when compared with attention that has focused on boys' and men's experiences of these social processes. In interviewing women across the age range (16-85 years) the main concern was whether gender and class inequalities are eroded and/or recreated and to what extent change incorporates actual, material, shifts or 'imagined' subjective movements, away from 'old', 'traditional' identities towards new, 'mobile' (dis)positions. Both gender and class are highlighted as relevant in the reclamation and contestation of social space (workplace, home space, leisure space), in the transformations from and continuations between the 'past', 'present' and imagined 'future'. This research drew on a wide range of literature and frameworks; sociological work on social transformation and division; feminist frameworks regarding gender inequality and identity; youth studies approaches on transition and 'social exclusion', as well as methodological literature regarding the practice of a 'public sociology'. The research was based on 97 in-depth interviews (55 individual interviews and 8 focus groups) with white women from middle-class and working-class backgrounds. Of these, 21 individual and three focus group interviews are held within the UK Data Archive collection. Further information may be found on the ESRC From the coal face to the car park? The intersection of class and gender in women's lives in the North East award webpage.
Main Topics:
Education, employment and employment history, gender roles, friends and family, local areas and communities, opinions of the North East, attitudes to social class.
Volunteer sample
Focus groups were sampled from a range of relevant voluntary groups.
Face-to-face interview
Video recording
