Growing Up Girl: Psycho-Social Explorations of Gender and Class

Qualitative Studies in Psychology Series

by Valerie Walkerdine, Helen Lucey, June Melody

Set against a backdrop of deindustrialisation, rising male unemployment and the feminisation and casualisation of the labour market, Growing Up Girl graphically explores the complexities of gender and class during a period of massive social change. It tells the story of today's 'I can have everything' girls who face unprecedented shifts in the organisation of family, education and work, and yet who continue to struggle with the not always visible but always palpable pressures of wealth, poverty, class and ethnicity.



Drawing on data spanning nearly twenty years, the authors of this ground-breaking study provide a sobering antidote to commonplace platitudes about 'girl power' and a feminine future. They reveal the hidden price of middle class girls' apparently effortless achievements - obsessive hard work, guilt and devastating feelings of inadequacy - and they trace how the labour market cruelly sets material limits on the disappointed hopes and ambitions of working class girls.

Vividly illustrating their arguments with quotations from the research participants, they show how young women's practices of self-invention are regulated both by unconscious processes and real social and economic constraints. Their insistent conclusion is that class is far from dead. Indeed, it is centrally important to our understanding of what it is to be a young woman in today's complex and challenging world.

This important and grippingly written book is essential reading for students and scholars alike in sociology, cultural studies, women's studies, education and psychology. It will also be of interest to anyone else struggling to make sense of the position of women in society today.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this is about girls born in 1974 (ie me). This is pretty old and in some ways you could argue it's out of date. But I found the issues it points to are still largely unresolved. So as a historical piece and as a provocation for today I still found it crucial.

I would value these writers (or someone) doing up a follow-up study, if not of my generation then one of the ones that has followed us so far. What are girls doing now? What are the issues facing working-class and middle-class girls. What of second or third generation underclass (unemployed). With schooling becoming less and less equitable what are the patterns? I mean I could guess some but a study is good in terms of detail and analysis.

This is based in the UK but I still found it compelling and relatable. Someone at work asked me why I was reading it and I tried to explain (it had started off because I somehow thought it would be useful for work) but I ended up conceding I was reading it for "fun". I felt kind of understood in this (being a girl born in 1974 who was supposedly a "bright" underachiever with suicide attempts and an accidentally on purpose pregnancy to self-sabotage.

Gen x feminists should read it to be recognised. Everyone else should read it for other reasons.