Jane Elliott Research Director National Child Development Study and British Birth Cohort 1970

1. Sub-brand to go here Breaking down the binary divide: constructions of gender in quantitative and qualitative research7 November , 2008 Jane Elliott Research Director National Child Development Study and British Birth Cohort 1970 CLS is an ESRC Resource Centre based at the Institute of Education

2. Women is a concept that must be understood as the sine qua non for feminism as both a philosophical and political project (Riley 1988).

3. Gender within quantitative and qualitative approaches to research • Quantitative view of gender:- • Gender (sex) within quantitative analysis is relatively unproblematic • It is one of the easiest variables to code, use and understand • There is an assumption that gender is constant over time (for individuals) • Cross-cohort comparisons can be used to start exploring whether the meaning of gender is changing within British society

4. Proportion of women in paid employment, by age and cohort Source: Jenny Neuburger - Paper presented at CLS June 2008

5. Gender within quantitative and qualitative approaches to research • Potential of Qualitative work for understanding gender • However it is only by adopting a qualitative approach that we can problematise gender and explore the individual’s role in establishing their own gendered identity (Doing gender?) • Qualitative analysis needs to acknowledge that individuals can only act within the constraints of a gendered society and have access to specific resources with which to construct a gendered identity • Also need to be aware that social class and ethnicity are key components of identity and interact with gender

6. Gender trouble? ‘Women’ has become ‘a troublesome term, a site of contest, a cause for anxiety’ (Butler 1990:3). The category ‘women’ is ‘historically, discursively constructed and always relative to other categories which themselves change’ (Riley 1988) “How could someone be a woman through and through, make a final home in that classification without suffering claustrophobia?” (Riley 1988) However….it is also impossible to formulate precisely and risks being ‘crowded with the over-determinations of male supremacy’ (Alcoff 1988: 405)

7. Doing gender • West and Zimmerman (1987) • ‘We argue that gender is not a set of traits, nor a role, but the product of social doings of some sort. What then is the social doing of gender?’ (p133) • ‘We have claimed that a person’s gender is not simply an aspect of what one is, but, more fundamentally, it is something that one does and does recurrently, in interaction with others’ (p142)

8. Case Studies: mixed methods research • Wajcman and Martin (2002): Narratives of identity in Modern Management: the corrosion of gender difference?’ Sociology, 36:985-1002 • Study on the careers of managers • Self-completion questionnaire (sample of 470 managers in six large Australian companies) • In-depth interviews with 136 managers

9. Case Studies: mixed methods research • Both structured questionnaire and narrative interviews focus on managers’ careers • Quantitative survey data revealed very few differences between the careers of male and female managers • No impact on tenure; working overseas; number of companies; centrality of work to identity • Women earned less & perceived fewer chances for promotion

10. Wajcman and Martin: Qualitative interviews • In-depth interviews concentrated on ‘the identities managers give themselves in their narratives of career and private life’ (2002, 991) • Wajcman and Martin state that their approach ‘neither accepts nor rejects the unity of identity’ so that they focus on ‘the different narrative identities managers adopt; whether they mesh successfully and whether these patterns differ between men and women’.

11. Wajcman and Martin: Qualitative interviews • Wajcman and Martin identify the ‘market narrative’ within managers accounts of their careers and contrast it with a more traditional ‘bureaucratic narrative’ • Managers represent themselves as ‘ largely autonomous agents, unconstrained by authoritative norms and life patterns’ • ‘Market narratives’ are described as having no overt gender content & as used equally by men and women • However, marked gender differences are reported in the way that interviewees integrate a career narrative with their ‘private’ or ‘family’ narrative

12. Wajcman and Martin: Approaches to gender • In depth interviews and narrative understanding of identity provides an opportunity for a different understanding of gender • Quantitative research suggests that gender differences are not marked • However, by comparing the narratives of male and female managers, even in the qualitative analysis, gender is treated as a fixed attribute and operates as an axis for comparison in both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the research

13. Doing gender in mixed methods research • Qualitative analysis of individuals doing gender potentially de-stabilises the use of gender as a fixed attribute in quantitative research • Emphasizing the ontological differences between qualitative and quantitative research problematises the straightforward integration of qualitative and quantitative methods • The tensions and ambiguities created in the process of conducting a mixed methods study can be productive if they force us to be more reflexive about the categories that we use.

14. British Birth Cohort Studies • Existing UK/GB National Studies: • 1946: MRC National Survey of Health & Development • 1958: National Child Development Study • 1970: 1970 British Birth Cohort Study • MCS: Millennium Cohort Study - the first national birth cohort study for 30 years (2000-1) British Birth Cohort Studies

15. 1958 Birth Cohort Study • Sample of over 17,000 infants born in March 1958 (perinatal mortality study) • Sample followed at ages 7, 11, 16, 23, 33, 42, 46 (prospective study) • Multipurpose study: family life; education; employment; skills; housing; health; finances; citizenship • Over 10,000 individuals are still participating • Mainly quantitative – highly structured interviews, but qualitative interviews with a subsample of cohort members are planned for age 50 • Now funded by ESRC with data collected every four years

16. Exam results Parents’ social class Voting behaviour Training and skills Parental divorce Savings Gets married Born 1958 1st Child 1984 2nd Child 1987 Age 11 x Age 7 Mother smoking Job 1 Job 2 Job 3 Parental interest in school work Psychological well being Domestic division of labour Working hours preferences Free school meals Maths and reading tests Union membership Teachers’ assessment of child’s behaviour Hypothetical life history Age 16 2000 2004 1991 1981 Age 23 Age 42 Age 46 Age 33

17. NCDS 11-year old Essays • At age 11, in 1969 NCDS Cohort members completed a short questionnaire (at school) about leisure interests, preferred school subjects and expectations on leaving school • They were also asked to write an essay on the following topic: • ‘Imagine you are now 25 years old. Write about the life you are leading, your interests, your home life and your work at the age of 25. (You have 30 minutes to do this).’ • 13669 essays completed, mean length 204 words • Copies of the original essays (in children’s handwriting) are available on microfiche at CLS and are currently being digitised.

19. Two sets of research questions • How do gender and social class shape what children write about in their essays? • What resources, techniques and devices do the eleven year old children use to sustain and establish their identities within the essays?

20. Qualitative results: themes in boys’ and girls’ essays

21. Case study 1

22. Case study 2

23. Potential traps and pitfalls of quantitative research on gender • It’s all too easy to look for, and find, gender differences • The men are people and women are mothers problem (synecdoche) • The problem with variable based sociology (Herbert Blumer 1957 ) Need for more narrative and descriptive analyses

24. The experiences of mothers in the 1958 generation suggests tha t women have started to benefit from the equal opportunities provisions enacted in Britian in the 1970s. The age of the youngest child is still the most important determinant of women’s participation over the pre-school years, although its impact may well have weakened relative to the influence of the mother’s level of qualifications and own wage (Dex et al 1998: 95) Our results confirm the polarizing effects found in other studies that career oriented women who are also highly educated delay childbirth and return quicker after giving birth when their maternity leave has expired (Gustafsson et al 1996: 242)

25. Discussion • How might we define feminist social research? • Do feminists have an obligation to be numerate and able to do (at least basic) quantitative research? • Is mixed methods research the new feminist research? • What can be done to encourage more women to learn quantitative data analysis skills? • What practical steps can feminist researchers take to ensure that social research does not reinforce gender inequalities in society? Institute of Education University of London 20 Bedford Way London WC1H 0AL Tel +44 (0)20 7612 6000 Fax +44 (0)20 7612 6126 Email info@ioe.ac.uk Web www.ioe.ac.uk

26. Ideas for talk • - Blumer Problems of variable based approaches • Ease of looking at gender differences (example of MCS research) • Denise Riley need to understand gender as historically specific • Call for more descriptive and narrative sociology Andrew Abbott • Conflation of mothers and women (synecdoche problem) men = people/women=mother ‘Men are people and women are mothers’