Trading Choices - Impacts of family, peers, and media on young people's emergent career identities

GO TO: TOC / Previous / Next - School structures

Family 

Family contexts that open up nontraditional possibilities
Negative, neutral, or mixed family messages about females in the trades
Childhood play
Media
Television portrayals of nontraditional occupations
Media and young people’s early career ideas
Nontraditional roles and authenticity
Seeking and producing career-related media
Friends and other peers
Impact of friends on those pursuing nontraditional pathways
The influence of peers on those pursuing nontraditional pathways
Generational change
Summary

 

Impacts of family, peers, and media on young people's emergent career identities

Throughout life people respond to – and actively participate in – social contexts that enable them to ‘make sense’ of the world around them, and to construct and reconstruct their identities. New research perspectives on career identity suggest that ‘a sense of self is acquired, refined and retransmitted through community interaction’ (Law, Meijers, & Wijers, 2002, p. 434). This calls into question earlier models that assume career identities as the final destination of a skills-accumulating staircase, where a stable sense of self is co-opted into the prescribed roles of a fixed occupational entity that exists independently of the young person her/himself (Collin, 1997; Vaughan, Roberts, & Gardiner, 2006; Woods & Jeffrey, 2002). This chapter takes the position that career identity is an ever-evolving process

, by which young people experiment with different identities from early childhood, reviewing and recasting their career (future) selves in response to emergent social signals.

Young people are presented with a multitude of messages as they mature, through their interactions with people and other socialisation agents, such as the media. While some gender and career decision-making discourses predominate over others, each young person participates in a unique combination of social experiences, which often produces conflicting message systems that must be navigated and reconciled to develop (and recast) their career/life identities. Young people are not passive actors who simply absorb all or any of the ideas and expectations that they come into contact with. They are active and discerning agents, who direct, select, evaluate, and position themselves in relation to different information flows. Previous research suggests that girls may take a more collaborative approach to career decision making (Reay, 1998), suggesting that family and peers could have a stronger influence on women.

In this chapter, we examine the ways in which young people make meaning from the various messages they are exposed to. Each interview narrative provides insight into the socialisation contexts and factors that influence the young person’s ever-evolving relationship to study and career pathways. We explore whether (and why) young males and females differently receive (and react to) messages about what careers are open and interesting to them, through their interactions with family, childhood play, peers, and popular media. Specifically, we look at how some social contexts and/or individuals allow some young women and men to pursue pathways that are nontraditional for their gender. We take our analysis beyond ‘what’ or ‘who’ influences young people, to examine ‘how’ certain people/agents make a difference. We pay particular attention to the socialisation experiences of the young women who made the move to male-dominated trades.

Family

The family environment is the first and primary agent of socialisation for most people. Family relationships and activities continue to have a powerful influence on young people’s sense of self throughout, and beyond, their upbringing. Learning that takes place in family settings can shape how young people interpret discourses about gender and careers encountered in their later interactions with peers and wider society. Past research has suggested that parenting – and the relationship between families, communities, and schools – plays a key role in forming children’s learner identities, as well as their educational decisions and achievements (Biddulph, Biddulph, & Biddulph, 2003; Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003; Epstein, 1995; Maani & Kalb, 2006). One explanation puts it as follows:

Sex stereotyping is making assumptions about that women should play different roles in society… Stereotypes affect what young people do at home and how they are treated, which influences the subjects they take at school, restricting their choice of future jobs and career, and again contributes to stereotypical views in the home. (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2001)

Discussions about families strongly featured in our interviewees’ stories of how they came to be in their current pathway and their future career planning. In this section we draw from the interview narratives to explore the gender and career discourses that permeate family interactions and shape young people’s study/career decision making. We also consider how the young people we interviewed reconciled message conflicts (for example, between their two parents) and whether young women and young men face different expectations/experiences.

Before we focus our attention on how families can act to encourage or dissuade young people from seeking out nontraditional pathways, it is important to note that when we asked interviewees directly about their family members’ reactions to their current and predicted pathways, most said that their parents were happy if they were happy. The subtext was that their families just wanted them to make a [good] choice, regardless of what that choice was. Parents appeared to focus on their young person being happy in a pathway rather than focusing on the pathway itself. For example:

My mum didn’t care, as long as I was happy with it [choice to be a builder]. (Trainee, female, nontraditional)

My mum says I should do what I enjoy: if I enjoy it, just go for it. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

They [parents] think it is good for me, knowing what I want to do. (Senior secondary student, male, traditional)

They’re [family] just happy that I want to do something instead of being a bum. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

My mum is sweet as with it. Whatever I want to do she’s sweet as with. (Junior secondary student, male, traditional)

My parents are happy that I’m doing something that will give me a job for the rest of my life. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

This idea of unconditional family support fits with NZCER’s previous research on young peoples’ pathways navigation (Vaughan et al., 2006, p. 57). It also fits with the pathway framework’s choice narrative: however, as we show later in this chapter, this can conceal how family practices and discourses can make some ‘decisions’ more likely than others.

Family contexts that open up nontraditional possibilities 

Family activities/conversations can open up or close down the potential for a young person to identify with or pursue a pathway that is nontraditional for their gender (Jacobs, Chhin, & Bleeker, 2006; Francis, 2000/2002 cited in Osgood et al., 2006).

Families’ connections to trades-related occupations can expose young women to environments that, for others, might be considered unusual for their gender. Several young women in nontraditional pathways spoke about their family’s interests or work in trade-related areas. This appeared to have two major implications for their future career planning. Firstly, it normalised the participation of women in the area. For example:

My parents and family are into cars and stuff – we’ve always gone to hotrod shows even when I was little… Dad’s a panel beater and my bro is an engineer and my other brother is a kind of mechanic. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

My stepdad is right into DIY. We have good yarns about tools and they [my mum and stepdad] do up houses and have a builder that helps them out. Both of my parents think it’s cool that I have learnt this stuff. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

Secondly, it provided these young women with authentic and detailed knowledge of an area, which they could use to offset any conflicting stereotyped messages about who (specifically which gender) is considered best suited to the work. They were able to develop a genuine sense of what the trades entail. For example:

Because my dad was in the [avionics] industry, and I could see what he did, and learnt about the tools and how stuff worked… Grandfather mainly [gave me advice/information about building] then I got a lot when I was doing work experience – they were happy for me to be onsite and learn. (Ex-trainee, female)

You always hear the trades are out there but you never really see what is involved unless you have a family member in that trade… I might have stuck with hospitality if I hadn’t hung out with granddad – probably would have regretted it. (Ex-trainee, female)

I got into cars because dad was building one when I was little. You always think it’s a man’s job but it’s not. (Junior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

These women’s nontraditional family experiences are similar to traditional young males’ narratives about their early interests in trade-related work and play. However, we found that such stories are more common for young men overall. Some of the young men’s explanations loosely connected to traditional ‘blue collar’ trades systems where sons were expected to follow in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers (Gibson & Papa, 2000):

Interviewee one: I wanted to be a builder like my granddad. He gave me tools and stuff and I’ve had the chance to work with him.

Interviewee two: I did some plastering work with dad and I enjoyed it. (Senior secondary students, male, traditional)

My old man is a sparkie – he kinda pushed me towards it. (Apprentice, male, traditional)

As one of our feedback workshop participants told us, having a father in the trades is likely to influence young men more than young women, due to different gender expectations:

My dad’s real practical ‘cos he’s a joiner, and my brother is a mechanic. I don’t want to sit around in an office. I wanted to be proud and make dad proud... If your family is based around trades, you’ll definitely think towards being in the trades. My little brother who’s only 14 wants to be in trades. He sees me and wants to become a plumber. I’m an electrician and my other brother is a mechanic and my dad’s a joiner… I reckon family and friends do have an influence. [Do you have any sisters?] I’ve got four sisters. They’re a lot tidier then we are. They don’t want to be in the trades. My brother comes home dirty and me too. One wants to become a hairdresser, one’s in travel and tourism, and one accounting. My second sister was influenced by her friend in Christchurch who’s a hairdresser. She’s still at school, but she’s doing work experience once a week for it. (Apprentice, male, feedback workshop)

Conversely, another participant (in the all-female feedback workshop) noted that families without trades connections and without gender-specific expectations could be very supportive of their daughter choosing a trades pathway. A similar point was made in a (posted) feedback comment, which suggested that it is not helpful to assume family ties to trades:

A lot of people assume that being a female in a trade means you must [be] following your dad’s footsteps; [they assume] that the only way you could get in was from outside help. (Female, feedback comment)

Unlike young men, young women often contend with social signals from other contexts that suggest that a woman’s place in the trades cannot be taken for granted. Overall it seems that, in some families, family scripts outweigh other gender scripts.

Negative, neutral, or mixed family messages about females in the trades 

Not all interviewees were so well supported by their families. We saw the occasional examples where family members had reacted negatively when a young person expressed an interest in a nontraditional pathway. For some young people, their parents presented a unified front of disapproval, but it tended to be only one parent who actively discouraged their nontraditional choice making:

My father doesn’t like it, but my mother is alright. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

My mother was absolutely aghast [with my decision to be an electrician] – she wanted me to go to university – she’s a school teacher. My dad was stoked – he was in the military and he wanted me to find a direction; he wanted me to have a goal and not keep floating. He thought that I was suitable for this job. My mother didn’t want her daughter to be in a trade – she was of the mindset that if you are in a trade you are stupid. [She’s] old school. She wanted me to go to uni. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

The second quote above illustrates that family members’ perspectives are not solely influenced by dominant gender norms. In this case the mother’s opinion seemed to emerge from an interaction between gender norms and the higher status of academic pathways. Given that the interviewee continued as an electrician we might suggest that her father’s approval outweighed her mother’s disapproval in this situation. But it does raise questions about how young people might be prepared to negotiate variable or inconsistent levels of family support.

Rather than experiencing direct disapproval, another participant mentioned that she had not received any active support or advice from family members even though they had expertise in the area:

No-one gave [me] advice about the electrical job – not even [my] stepfather who is an electrician. (Ex-trainee, female)

Contrasted against the experiences of young men with fathers and grandfathers in the trades (noted in the above subsection), it is plausible that family-based trades-related knowledge may have been withheld from this young woman because of her gender. Parents do not necessarily set out to deny young women from fully exploring their options, but they still endorse traditional female roles:

I really liked animals and mum told me I could be a farmer’s wife…I think she was like a lot of women in her generation and just really shaped by gender roles and gendered career paths, so access to that world [of animal-related work] would have been through being a farmer’s wife. Also, with her being from Malaysia; I wanted to work with animals so it automatically meant farming. (Ex-trainee, female)

It is interesting to note that the young women who mentioned negative reactions from family members tended to have made a ‘surprise’ decision to enter a trades-related pathway in their late teens or early twenties. Although the numbers are tiny, one possible explanation might be that these young women were less likely to come from families who normalised trades-work or non-normative gender roles throughout their childhood. Another might be that playing with nontraditional identities becomes ‘higher stakes’ the older a young woman gets. Perhaps at that stage a young person’s interests/ decisions become a ‘more real’ threat to parents’ preconceived ideas about their child’s future, or perhaps they are just anxious for their child to avoid ‘about turns’ at what they consider to be the key time for career development.

Thus the interviews show that young people are exposed to different family experiences and comments that can open up or close down different career possibilities. Although gender differences are not clear cut, it seems that young men receive more support for trades-related pathways than young women. An obvious strategy might therefore be to provide more information to family members, not just to young people, about the spaces available for women in trades training and work.

Childhood play

Children are introduced to career experiences, opportunities, and possibilities through the experience of play. They try out various roles in pretend play, and experiment with different gender and fantasy roles. For example, they act out parental roles, imitating what they have absorbed from the life experiences surrounding them.

As outlined in Chapter 2, we asked all interviewees to cast their minds back to their earliest memories about what they might want do ‘be’ when they grew up. We were interested to see the extent to which their early career dreams fit with dominant gender roles, and what had happened to their dreams over time. It is perhaps not surprising that a large proportion of both male and female interviewees had imagined themselves in a career that would be considered traditional for their gender. For example, young men had wanted to be soldier, pilot, farmer, doctor, fire-fighter, builder, architect, policeman, truck driver, etc., whereas young women saw themselves as dancers, singers, actresses, hairdressers, nannies, fashion designers, dressmakers, etc.

Very few male interviewees said that they had aspired to female-dominated occupations as a child, but, in contrast, a large proportion of female interviewees saw themselves in traditionally male-dominated[18] occupations. This was especially the case for young women who were current trainees in male-dominated trades. The tendency for both girls and boys to aspire to traditionally male occupations fits well with the interviewees’ responses to a later question. Here we provided them with a list of female- and male-dominated occupations, and asked which they thought held higher status in today’s society. Consistently, the young people selected historically male-dominated ‘professions’, such as doctor, lawyer, and policeman (although very few selected the male-dominated trades). The pattern also fits with other research that suggests men are more concerned about taking up ‘cross sex-typed’ work than women (Gottfredson, 1996 in Blanchard & Lichtenberg, 2003; Razumnikova, 2005).

We looked closely at their narratives to see how childhood play might have enabled them to try out different career identities at an early age. According to the young women, their pretend play often cast them in gender-traditional roles:

I wanted to be a celebrity singer…I made up routines and dances. (Senior secondary student, female, traditional)

I was getting really creative when I was little and then I started sewing and I wanted to be a fashion designer or seamstress or something. (Junior secondary student, female, traditional)

I wanted to be a hairdresser ’cos my mum was one… I was four ’cos I was dressing up in my mum’s clothes. (Senior secondary student, female, traditional)

I wanted to be a fairy princess; I had a Barbie doll princess and I wanted to be like her. (Junior secondary student, female)

Other young women had tested themselves in a role less traditional for their gender, occasionally explicitly noting that they rejected gender stereotypes:

I just wanted to be a doctor because I had this doctor’s set when I was little. (Junior secondary student, female, traditional)

I wanted to get into building – when I was little I built a fort. (Trainee, female, nontraditional)

I wanted to be a vet ’cos I liked playing with animals. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

I wanted to be an astronaut, then a vet…and have moved on to wanting to be a motocross driver… I never had a Barbie doll, and the first time I did, I gave it a Mohawk. I’ve grown up in quite a boyish way. I’m the only girl in the family. I don’t know, just the atmosphere in the house, my parents didn’t want me to become all soft and girlish. I like being different. (Junior secondary student, female)

I wanted to be a professional BMX rider… I used to do BMX riding for fun when I was little. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

The following comments from young men in traditional pathways are in contrast:

I’ve wanted to be a computer technician – well I liked building computers – always trying to make my PC better and stuff. It’s been a strong interest, ever since I can remember. (Junior secondary student, male)

I wanted to be a professional skateboarder or basketballer – too much Tony Hawk Play Station… I liked playing Play Station games. (Junior secondary student, male)

I always considered building or carpentry. Since intermediate that is what I’ve wanted… I guess it is ’cos my dad always had planks of wood and nails for me to play around with. (Senior secondary student, male, traditional)

These comments provide an insight into how children develop career identities through childhood play. The retrospective – and re-storied – nature of the data means that we cannot make any strong claims about the different influences for young women and men, but it is telling that there were more women who talked about exploring traditionally masculine roles than there were men talking about exploring traditionally feminine roles.

Media

The influence of media such as advertising and television in socialisation, especially around gender identity, has been recognised for a long time now. Debates have been wideranging, from links made between the promotion of gendered toys (such as guns) to male violence, and from portrayals of thinness in the fashion industry to connections with female eating disorders. Today, more than ever, the youth demographic is targeted by entertainment and marketing companies, through a host of television shows, movies, video games, music, advertisements, Internet sites, etc. Young people are not just passive consumers. They actively pick and choose which messages to accept, alter, or subvert to suit. If young people deconstruct what they view, there may be both hegemonic and emancipatory messages in the same text depending on the reading of it (Sanchez & Stuckey, 2000 in Hylmö, 2006). In this subsection we explore interviewees’ narratives to demonstrate the media’s role in influencing young people’s ideas about gender roles and career options.

Television portrayals of nontraditional occupations 

Participants talked about the portrayal of males and females in nontraditional roles on television. Several suggested that these characters can make young people think, and potentially change their ideas, about what is considered an appropriate career choice for a man or woman:

[There should be] more advertising, on TV and stuff – even in programmes. If you see more and more of it [people in nontraditional roles] in everyday situations then it might make people think about it. I just think they should do more of that as young people are quite influenced by it and at least that would start them thinking about it. (Ex-trainee, female)

Several referred to male nurses on a variety of popular medically themed television shows. They tended to suggest that characters can be introduced to change people’s thinking about the sorts of jobs men and women can do:

When I was little I thought nurses were women but know I know they are men too. TV [and being] in hospital has changed my perceptions. (Senior secondary student, male, traditional)

There are heaps of male nurses. You see them all the time on Shortland Street – they deliberately introduce them I guess to make the point that it’s not a problem that males can be nurses. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

In contrast, a group of young women suggested that some character portrayals actually undo this potential, especially when male nurse characters are the butt of humour/ridicule/abuse:

Student one:   I don’t really think that a nurse is more of a woman’s job.

Student two:    It can be both.

Student one:   Like on TV shows and movies and stuff they’re always bagging the male nurse except I really don’t see a problem. (Junior secondary students, female, traditional)

Interestingly, in comparison to male characters in stereotypically female roles, no interviewee mentioned female television characters in traditionally male-dominated trades-related careers. This was addressed directly by the following interviewee:

On Scrubs and Shortland Street it is half and half [men and women nurses] but it is just for social reasons. For building TV shows the girls are only in the garden area. In Mitre10 Dream Home there are no [female] plumbers, only the host. The professional builder has never been a female. (Senior secondary student, female, traditional)

Some perceived the media to conflate sexuality with nontraditional gender roles, especially for men:

Media always seem to portray people in nontraditional roles as gay, especially on TV. (Senior secondary student, male, traditional)

On Ugly Betty, everyone knows Mark is gay. If guys start working in the fashion industry, people expect them to be gay. (Junior secondary student, female)

But these [sexuality] stereotypes give you something to fight against. There aren’t any ads that tell you that sparkies are gay so no one ever ties sexuality to the job, not the same as hairdressing. For those sorts of jobs that don’t have such advertising you don’t instinctively think people are gay because they do X, Y, or Z. (Apprentice, male, traditional)

Media and young people’s early career ideas 

The media can impact on people’s thinking about the world and their identity construction from a very young age (Garner, 1999; Hylmö, 2006). For example, there is ongoing debate about how television violence and junk food advertisements potentially influence young people’s behaviour and eating habits. Do these arguments have any connections to how media portray gender and careers? Our interviewees’ comments about their early career dreams suggest that they were often attracted to jobs they perceived to be ‘cool’. Their retrospective accounts included the following direct links between television and emerging career identities. It is clear that the media plays a role in glorifying or selectively representing career options, to the extent that some portrayals are substantially different from the realities of an occupation:

I wanted to be a chef and that was my main focus when I was young, from seven or so…thought it looked cool – from TV and books and stuff. (Ex-trainee, female)

I actually wanted to be a police officer when I was a kid. That’s the main thing I remember – or a lawyer. I think that’s about it… I just liked those TV programmes with lawyers. (Ex-trainee, female)

I always wanted to be a doctor when I was younger. I didn’t really follow through with that as I got older… I was always interested in those kinds of TV programmes and stuff. (Ex-trainee, female)

[I wanted to make] music. I watched music videos every day and played music. (Junior secondary student, male, traditional)

…Jamie [Oliver, a TV cooking celebrity] makes everything good. (Junior secondary student, male, traditional)

I moved to wanting to be a motocross driver because I saw it on TV, pulling stunts on bikes and going fast. (Junior secondary student, female)

[I wanted to do archaeology] from watching Indiana Jones – thought it was cool and stuff. (Junior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

The above quotes show that, at least as children, some female and male interviewees identified with different television characters and work possibilities regardless of their own gender or the gender of the main characters.

Nontraditional roles and authenticity 

Similar to television shows, interviewees had noticed that current advertising campaigns appear to consciously challenge traditional gender roles to open up the option for both genders:

Well there’s that Army ad. [Oh true, so does that stick out?] Yeah because you would probably expect a guy. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

Often these adverts stick out from a wide array of gender-stereotyped marketing:

The [polytechnic] ads have girls doing interior design and the guys doing automotive – it could be that those are the people who have done the course etc. but it has an impact. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

Stop having them advertise buff men for building and pretty women for hairdressing. And for chefs it’s always a guy. They make it seem impossible for women to do building, but it’s not. (Junior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

There is one [advert] for logging on TV at the moment and you only see men on the ad. (Trainee, female, nontraditional)

There’s a building thing [brochure] at [a local university] but there’s a boy on the cover. (Senior secondary student, female, traditional)

Most interviewees believed that advertising should represent ‘real’ people in ‘real’ work:

I’ve seen the [polytechnic] ad and that has girls doing plumbing and stuff – it gives other girls a chance to see that they could do it too. I guess more stories would be good – you can’t tell if people are enjoying things in photos or what it is about the job that they like. It could even be a setup for the promotion. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

Sometimes when there is a girl [in a trades advert] you can tell that she’s a model. (Senior secondary student, female, traditional)

The New Zealand Army’s digitally generated Lara Croft/Tomb Raider advert suffered some criticism due to its lack of authenticity:

The female Army ad, it’s cool but it’d be cooler if it was a real person. I definitely noticed that it had a female in it. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

[What do you think of the Army ad?] With the hot chick? With tits out here and a waist this big? It appeals more to the men than the girls. It is a big turn off to the women. And when the men see women with tummies they think – god this is not what I was expecting. It really pisses me off that ad, because it’s not realistic and they are just selling it to young men. It would be better if she was realistically built then I wouldn’t have a problem with it. The Navy ads are better, their women are real women. (Trainee, female, nontraditional)

However, while they quite rightly suggest that it is too easy to dismiss unrealistic pictures of people in nontraditional pathways, it also seems that young people draw on pre-existing gender scripts and previous knowledge about a job to tell them what is authentic. Interviewees’ evaluations of authenticity are not always correct, as we found when we showed them a picture of a New Zealand female builder – many suggested she that was a model, not a builder, and presented us with ‘evidence’ to support their claim (for example, her shorts were too short, she was too pretty, her toolbelt was on wrong, her hands weren’t dirty enough, etc.).[19]

Seeking and producing career-related media 

In narrowing down – or opening up – their study and career pathways, some young people navigate a broad array of media, including magazine articles, newspaper adverts, flyers, brochures, posters, and tertiary course booklets. For some young people, sorting through these various sources is a strategy to help them decide where they might like to head; for others they merely provide concrete information to help a young person access a training institution that provides what they have already decided on. And for others, seeing an advert can spark a sudden interest in a new area.

The Internet is one arena that allows young people to direct their own searching, and it can explicitly encourage consumption and interaction at the same time. Several participants mentioned their use of the Internet as the first point of information gathering about specific career options and related training:

Wasn’t even looking till I decided so I just jumped on the Internet. I did a search on electrical apprenticeship and came up with [this training provider] and Modern Apprenticeships – because [this provider] is the link into that too. I applied online not even knowing if I’d really do it…. This [provider] was first on the Internet even though it’s a ‘minority’ in the industry. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

I went onto the [polytechnic] website and asked about the course – it was starting the following year. (Ex-trainee, female)

I didn’t know much about the training course at the [polytechnic]. I had looked on the Internet to see how long it would take and what the apprenticeship would cover in a broad sense. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

These few insights into the effect and influence of television and other media on young children’s future career possibilities tell us more about the missed opportunities that could be produced through the media, than what is produced. It is a powerful medium that could be used to portray realistically a range of occupations, including the trades, which could reduce the level of gendered thinking around careers.

Friends and other peers

Friends are a vital element in young people’s social environments, and play a key role in young people’s identity development (Sheriff, 2007). Young people share ideas about study and career possibilities, and together make meaning from the barrage of messages they receive about gender and careers. For the purposes of this section we treat friends and peers as two separate groups, looking at the role each can play in opening up or closing down nontraditional pathways.

Impact of friends on those pursuing nontraditional pathways 

As with families, friends appear to offer unconditional support for study and career exploration. All are ‘in the same boat’:

My friends didn’t care about my job choice – we were all finding our own ways, we were all finding our own place in life. I was the only girl doing an apprenticeship. I’ve got more male friends than female. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

My family and friends were really supportive and encouraging. (Ex-trainee, female)

Several young women in nontraditional pathways spoke about the active approval of their friends, even when their choices were considered to be rather unusual:

One of my friends is a hairdresser and she loves telling people her friend is a joiner... It’s funny to see people’s reactions when I tell them what I do. (Employee, female, nontraditional)

My friends are quite proud and tell lots of people. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

A lot of my friends weren’t too surprised. I’m a bit of a tomboy at heart; they expected me to do something quite mannish anyway. They wanted to come and sit at the site. (Ex-trainee, female)

However, not all of the young people’s friends were entirely positive about their choices:

They [my friends] didn’t expect it. Rather than doing furniture they’d expect me to do cooking or something. I’d tell my friends I was doing furniture and they would laugh. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

At first they weren’t expecting me to do that (electrical)… Some of my friends are pretty neutral about it (some thought I’d get either really butch or really feminine when I started). (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

While such responses signal the powerful gender norms that continue to be perpetuated by today’s youth, reactions of surprise, disbelief, and/or amusement seemed in most cases to be transitory. Some expressed pleasure and pride in having a friend who was doing something nontraditional for their gender. Friends were also a key factor in helping young people pursing nontraditional pathways to build resilience and deal with less positive reactions to their choice. There were, however, exceptions to this:

Your mates are the ones who would frown at you wanting to do something different… If guys want to do design it’s there for them to do but your mates push you into [gender- specific] classes. (Ex-trainee, female)

This fits with Osgood’s et al., (2006) research which suggests that:

Stereotypical views held by teenagers at a crucial stage of adolescent development, when they are seeking to construct ‘acceptable’ and normative constructions of gender identity combined with neoliberal, individualistic ‘freedom of choice’ approaches to equal opportunities has resulted in persistent gendered attitudes and experiences of work. (p. 318)

The influence of peers on those pursuing nontraditional pathways 

A peer could be described as any young person an individual interacts with in a learning and/or social environment (such as classmates, fellow trainees, sport team members, etc.). Young people in nontraditional pathways tend to be surrounded by peers of the opposite sex, and how these peers respond can influence whether or not the individual develops a sense of legitimacy about their choice. Consider the following two quotes in which two young women describe their expectations about how women in nontraditional pathways might be treated and perceived:

If I went into woodwork I probably would have got teased, and [it would have] undermined me. (Senior secondary student, female, traditional)

But you kind of got the impression [from other students, particularly boys] that if you did furniture you were a hard bitch or something – you were really tough because it was a guy’s thing. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

Thus peers, more so than friends, were likely to rely on stereotypes when attempting to make sense of young people’s nontraditional pathway choices:

Interviewee one: The boys thought we were there [in woodwork class] as a joke.

Interviewee two: The first time we showed up to class it was pretty crazy. All the boys were going ‘What is she doing here?’ but I was in that class last year as well. (Senior secondary student, female, nontraditional)

Disapproval can be motivating as well as offputting, as feedback workshop participants discussed:

Participant one: Some people didn’t approve so I did things to prove them wrong. Most people approved though.

Interviewer: Has anyone else found that disapproval motivated you?

Participant two: It motivated me to do my advanced trade once I’m qualified. I wanted to do it maybe 60 percent anyway. Even though I’ve already done three years, people don’t see it as enough. They see me as a one-minute wonder. If I do two more years people will take me more seriously.

Some of these ideas are taken further in Chapter 5, where we explore how gender is constructed in trades training and work. Before that we demonstrate that interviewees’ narratives about other young people’s reactions to the nontraditional career choices of their peers clearly contradict their assertions that successive generations have become more supportive of gender equality.

Generational change

We asked interviewees to describe how they thought males and females are treated in nontraditional jobs today, and whether (and why) they thought things differed from what their parents or grandparents would have experienced. An overwhelming majority believed that attitudes have changed, and that there is much less pressure for today’s young people to stick with stereotypically gendered roles. For example:

Way different. Now you have the option to do whatever you want. In older times there were stricter roles with women cooking and cleaning. It’s definitely a good thing that it’s changing – it’s still occurring though. (Trainee, male, traditional)

Like society has more open views on what females and males can do now. [My parent’s perspectives are] closer to ours… they can do either… like my dad’s a nurse. So he does that. (Junior secondary student, male, nontraditional)

I think a lot of people are more accepting – realise that not everybody wants to do the same things. A more diverse workplace means more people bringing in ideas and stuff. (Ex-trainee, female)

Several young people specifically commented on changing social reactions both to male hairdressers and to females in the traditional male-dominated trades:

’Cos if you wanted to be a male hairdresser years ago people would have frowned upon it. (Senior secondary student, female, traditional)

Hairdressing is ok for guys now because guys care about their hair now [and] get all different styles… My uncle used to think I was gay because I talked about hairdressing. Now it is cool though. Guys play netball now. Sometimes people laugh at us but everyone plays netball now. (Senior secondary student, male, traditional)

I had a mate that wanted to be a hairdresser – I reckon it’s sweet if he wants to do that. Definitely more accepted for guys to be hairdressers these days. (Senior secondary student, male, traditional)

Very different from my grandparent’s time – unheard of for women to be plumbers then. In our parents’ day it was getting better. (Ex-trainee, female)

Females have more self-esteem now and we are not beholden to males and not so under males’ thumbs. When my mum was a kid they had issues with bikinis, short shorts. They would be told to go home and change for sexual promiscuity. Back in my grandparents’ day women were encouraged to get married and have kids and cook, and now you can do it all or what you want. Back then people were worried about what other people thought, now people don’t give a shit... People then didn’t want shame, and working in a nontrad job hanging round with boys all day people would think there was something going on. Youth today have had enough with the old ideas. (Apprentice, female, nontraditional)

These comments do not necessarily match with the actual male:female ratio in different trades. When we asked interviewees to estimate the percentage of females in a range of trades-related areas,^[20] the responses varied widely. It is difficult to see patterns, but overall estimates for the male-dominated jobs were more accurate than for the female-dominated jobs. It was not uncommon for interviewees to argue that girls can follow trades, they just do not want to (see Fuller et al., 2005). People often recognise that gender inequality exists, but are reluctant to talk about their own experiences as inequalities and tend to cite ‘natural differences’ and ‘freely made choices’ to argue that it is not a problem (Howard & Tibballs, 2003, p. 52). As one of the participants in a feedback workshop put it:

If the reason why those percentages are so low, it’s probably partly because they are scared about what people will say about them; but then again if people aren’t doing those trades because they just don’t have a passion for it, then they should just leave it. (Junior secondary student, female, traditional)

Summary

Our interviewees’ comments make it clear that messages from family, peers, and media are an important influence in ‘setting the direction’ for young people’s career decision making. These messages were, it seems, particularly important for the young women who have gone into the traditionally male-dominated trades. The messages from family, friends, and so on appear to lay the foundations onto which other influences are later added. As outlined in the next two chapters, these later influences, depending on the context, can support – or subvert – these early messages.

GO TO: TOC / Previous / Next - School structures and discourses