Creating space for learning: conceptualizing women and higher education through space and time

Abstract This paper highlights the strengths of giving visibility to the concepts of space and time in research related to women's lives and higher education. It is based on research that explores the everyday practice and experience of women higher education students at a community college in the north of England. It focuses on the ways in which space and time to study are both socially and personally constructed. The concepts of space and time are drawn on to theorize and analyze women students' experiences and to draw attention to the 'behind scenes of power and control' shaping action (Layder, 1993 Layder D 1993 New strategies in social research (Cambridge, Polity) Google Scholar, p. 249). Women students from a range of backgrounds are considered, including younger/older, mother/non‐mother and differential class and geographical heritage. The paper highlights three issues. Firstly, the increasingly restricted ground available for academic studies in women's lives, resulting from the restructuring of paid work, social welfare and higher education. Secondly, the hierarchy of values and ambiguous meanings attached to higher education when women attempt to study. Thirdly, the intense negotiations undertaken by women students in order to construct space and time for academic work. Notes Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education, Headingley Campus, Beckett Park, Leeds LS6 3QS, UK. Email: d.moss@leedsmet.ac.uk Although class background was difficult to identify, it was not impossible. Paid work, as an indicator was not viable because of women's student status. Their paid work in most cases was temporary and transitional. The paid work they were involved in as students demonstrated that virtually all of them would fall into the lowest socio‐economic position, as they worked in routine or semi‐routine occupations and rates of pay were very low. However other factors revealed through giving visibility to space and time in the research were significant indicators of class background, for example, routes of entry to higher education (only a third of the cohort had A levels on entry), patterns of housing tenure, parental occupation, income, participation in leisure and not least their own class identification. The majority of women students identified as working class. Giving visibility to space and time reveals important realities regarding the conditions that students experience in relation to poverty, poor housing, employment and their particular routes through higher education (Zmroczek & Mahoney, 1997 Zmroczek C Mahoney P 1997 Women's studies and working class women in: Ang‐Lygate M Corrin C Millsom SH (Eds) Desperately seeking sisterhood: still challenging and building (London, Taylor & Francis) Google Scholar). The college where the research was based has a traditionally high working class entry.