Gender identity, intergenerational dynamics, and educational aspirations: Young women’s hopes for the future

Abstract

This chapter examines intergenerational relations between mothers and daughters and the intersecting factors that shape gender as embodied subjectivity and as integral to the organization of social life. Its focus is young women and educational and social aspirations, and the discussion proceeds via two extended case studies drawn from Australian research projects that engage longitudinal, cross-generational, and comparative perspectives. Everyday and interpersonal dynamics are explored as sites for understanding gender relations and identity in the making. An account of identity is proposed that acknowledges psycho-social and intergenerational dynamics, and it is argued that the situated, sociological, and historical dimensions of gender relations need to be examined alongside the interplay of emotion and desire. Much youth studies scholarship addresses the structural and macrosociological contexts in which young people’s lives take shape: this is undeniably important. Yet, it is argued that too often such approaches can obscure from view the salience of interpersonal and familial relations, the affective realm in which imagining and enacting the self unfolds. Identity is not a static project produced by discourse or shaped simply by either sociological or psychological imperatives. In the scenarios discussed in this chapter, identity is understood as situated, intersectional, and relational. Young women’s social class, their school and residential location, and their family relations are highlighted, both as intersecting influences and as points of entry for a close-up look at the process of making gender and making futures.