Girls of the Future?

British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2006, pp. 409–415 EXTENDED REVIEW Girls of the Future? Alison Phipps* University of Sussex, UK [email protected] AlisonPhipps Taylor 2006 British 10.1080/01425690600753944 CBSE_A_175356.sgm 0142-5692 30Extended 27 00000July & and Journal Francis Review (print)/1465-3346 Francis 2006 of Ltd Sociology Ltd of(online) Education Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century Anita Harris, 2004 London, Routledge £60.00 (hbk), £16.99 (pbk), 256 pp ISBN 0-415-94701-4 (hbk), ISBN 0-415-94702-2 (pbk) During the 1990s, the United Kingdom witnessed a rapidly growing interest in the study of masculinities, in the media and popular psychology as well as in academia. This interest, in particular the focus on the issue of ‘boys’ underachievement’ in education, has also been observed in other English-speaking countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Francis, 1999). Feminists have argued that this constitutes a ‘moral panic’, and have pointed out that one of its functions is to divert attention from the struggles of girls and young women and to inhibit research and reforms undertaken on their behalf (Skelton, 1998; Francis, 1999). This political debate, in addition to the intellectual value of researching young femininities, means that Anita Harris’ book Future Girl is of great academic interest. Its narrative about how girls and young women negotiate competing discourses around femininity is contextualised in an argument concerning how imaginings of young women are crucially important to culture and politics in neoliberal societies. This raises questions about the relationship between the so-called ‘crisis of masculinity’ and the moral panic around ‘boys’ underachievement’, and the idea that it is young women who are charged with the responsibility for carrying us into the new millennium. Harris argues that ‘in a time of dramatic social, cultural, and political transition, young women are being constructed as a vanguard of new subjectivity’ (p. 1). The neoliberal ideals of power, success and self-invention are modelled by the ‘future girl’, who takes charge of her life and achieves her goals. This is reflected in increasing numbers of books about girls, webpages directed towards them, and goods and services targeted at them. This new interest, Harris suggests, is both celebratory and *Lecturer in Sociology, Deputy Director of Gender Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brigton BN1 9SN, UK. Email: [email protected]. ISSN 0142-5692 (print)/ISSN 1465-3346 (online)/06/030409–07 © 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01425690600753944 410 Extended review regulatory: in constructing girls as the new social ‘winners’, we also exhort them to perform this role. She contends that young women occupy such a central position in the ‘risk society’ due to the new educational and employment possibilities open to them, and because ideologies about individual responsibility and choice dovetail with ‘broad feminist notions about opportunities for young women’ (p. 6). However, success is not a reality for many young women, as a result of the same conditions that have produced the ‘future girl’: ‘a changed labor market, economic rationalization, and a devolving of responsibility … onto individuals’ (pp. 8–9). In order to cultivate the idea of the ‘future girl’, the ‘failure’ of these other young women is dismissed as an aberration and put down to bad personal choices. Harris’ book is based largely on secondary evidence taken from academic and policy literature, together with statistical data and evidence from popular culture and websites for young women. She makes use of material from a range of western and post-communist contexts, and although she acknowledges that there are many national and cultural differences involved, her aim is to make general claims (p. 3). Chapter one of the book focuses on the production and juxtaposition of two types of girlhood. The ‘can-do’ girls, Harris argues, have the world at their feet and are committed to, and expected to, creating exceptional careers and a consumer lifestyle. The others, who are ‘at-risk’, are seen to have made bad personal choices resulting in inappropriate consumption behaviours (such as substance abuse and teenage pregnancy) and a general threat of failure. Girlhood, for Harris, has acquired deep symbolic value in terms of what it means to win or lose in the ‘risk society’, and an emphasis on the resilience and achievements of the mass of young women is contiguous with a ‘moral panic’ around the fact that a pathologised and criminalised minority are not achieving as they should. Through these two categories, Harris argues, ‘success and failure are constructed as though they were dependent on strategic effort and good personal choices’ (p. 32). This necessitates forms of surveillance and management that are either focused on therapising or criminalising young women, and that mask broader structural inequalities. ‘Girlpower’, Harris argues, is one of the most important words ‘in the new lexicon of young female success’ (p. 16), underpinning images of successful young women as independent and, above all, self-inventing. The ‘can-do’ girl is sexy, brash, and individualised, and her DIY project of the self bears fruit most prominently in success at work, a reflection of the New Right emphasis on labour market accomplishments. The construction of these young women as economically successful is coupled with their emergence as a key consumer group. In order to maintain their privileged economic position and considerable consumption habits ‘can-do’ girls have to delay motherhood into their 30s and 40s, but they do not renounce it entirely and are often instructed to have children before it is ‘too late’. In contrast, the behaviour of ‘at-risk’ girls has become a focus for larger moral concerns about ‘juvenile delinquency, nihilism, and antisocial attitudes’ (p. 25). In an individualistic culture, structural disadvantage is repositioned as being the result of ‘poor personal choices, laziness, and incompetent family practices’ (p. 25). The atrisk girl is seen to suffer from an excess of wilfulness leading to delinquency and Extended review 411 disordered patterns of consumption: a warning to all young women about the dangers of taking ‘girlpower’ too far. The largely working-class and ethnic minority girls in the ‘at-risk’ category have been the subject of moral panics around young women’s ‘laddish’ behaviour, and there have been new policy and procedural responses, particularly in relation to law enforcement and the regulation of young women’s sexuality. Chapter two of the book focuses on the archetypes of the can-do and at-risk girls in the domain of the labour market. Harris argues that new industries, new modes of work and the requirement for new types of workers have had a significant impact on young women. Due to the gains of feminism and the new opportunities open to her, the ‘can-do’ girl is imagined as the key flexible subject of globalising economies. However, Harris contends, the over-achieving young women who are represented as the mass of the ‘next generation’ are in fact a middle-class elite. The chapter aims to show that young women are not simply divided between a successful mainstream and a minority of failures, through examining three main groups of young women: first, young women from professional, successful and economically secure families; second, young women from the lower-middle to working classes; and, third, young women who are part of the lower-working class or, as Harris terms it, the ‘underclass’. The can-do girls, Harris argues, come from middle-class backgrounds, can mobilise a range of capitals and are likely to think that anyone can succeed as they have done. In line with the ideology of self-invention, lower-middle-class and workingclass young women often have middle-class educational and employment aspirations, but these young women have been hit by increasing credentialism and are forced to scramble for positions in the sales, service and communications sectors. Lower-working-class young women and those from the ‘underclass’ are situated on the fringes of the education system and labour market, are either unqualified or under-qualified, and struggle for a livelihood. These ‘at-risk’ girls traverse depleted welfare systems, are increasingly subject to youth training schemes and often end up in work that is insecure, low-paid and unfulfilling. Alternatively, they survive through the criminal economy and prostitution. This, Harris argues, brings them into the ‘regulatory circuit’ of the state and legal system, in which structural disadvantage is pathologised and reworked as personal failure. Harris cites class and race inequalities as the basis for these differences between young women, and also contends that capitalism is deeply implicated due to the fact that the stratification of young women has become important to the functioning of new economies. In the transition to deindustrialisation, successful middle-class young women are taking the place of professional men who have moved on to more prestigious and better-paid jobs, and the proletariat of lower-middle-class and working-class young women are positioned in the key service and communications sectors. Vital areas of the new manufacturing industries also depend on young women; in particular, garment work in homes and sweatshops. Thus, Harris argues that notwithstanding the discourse of girls’ success, ‘in fact it is necessary for many young women to effectively fail’ (p. 60). Chapter three explores the construction of young women as ideal citizens, best able to manage contemporary conditions and challenges. Harris argues that youth 412 Extended review citizenship has been reconstituted around responsibilities rather than rights, consumption and managed forms of participation such as leadership and entrepreneurship schemes. Young women are imagined as best placed to take up these new dimensions of citizenship and are personified as the ideal new citizens in three major ways: as the self-made girl, the ambassadress, and the consumer citizen. These characters ‘come together in a construction of ideal youthful femininity bound by discourses of self-invention, entrepreneurship, consumption, and success’ (p. 91). Harris cites an increase in government-run and corporate ventures that aim to get young people involved in entrepreneurship, and a proliferation of leadership programmes for young women designed to build confidence and foster good personal choices. She also argues that ‘makeup, lingerie, sporting goods, fashion, and music are the accessories for citizenship’ (p. 91), and contends that the capacity to participate and express oneself has been reinvented as the capacity to make consumer choices. However, Harris points out, it is a small minority of young women who have the disposable income to become consumer citizens. Those who cannot participate via consumption, and those who cannot fulfil their citizen duty to discharge their responsibilities without recourse to state resources, are deemed ‘atrisk’ and excluded from definitions of successful contemporary citizenship. In chapter four, Harris examines some of the sites in which the production of the split between ‘can-do’ and ‘at-risk’ girls takes place; namely, schools, workplaces, juvenile justice and welfare systems, and leisure spaces such as the street and shopping malls. She argues that although young women are no longer confined to the private sphere, in risk society structured spaces for youth are proliferating and leisure spaces are under increasing surveillance. The divide between the ‘can-do’ and ‘atrisk’ girls is created in these contexts of surveillance, as young women are ‘regulated into individualized competitors, responsible choice-makers, flexible and glamorous workers, and consumer citizens’ (p. 124). Schools, Harris argues, are now engaged in constructing a normative femininity based on outstanding performance. This successful schoolgirl subject position is more readily taken up by middle-class young women, and the remaining ‘at-risk’ girls are dealt with through special programmes in which success is constructed as being to do with the right personal choices and copious amounts of effort. Similar themes prevail in the workplace, where success is presented as the mainstream story, and youth training schemes encourage the at-risks to take personal responsibility. At both school and work, Harris contends, two pieces of ideological work are undertaken: the maintenance of the image of a successful mainstream; and, the production of a young feminine subjectivity based on flexibility, individualisation, self-invention and achievement. The juvenile justice system, Harris argues, is another key space for the surveillance and management of at-risk girls. Young women’s incarceration has risen in recent years, and while current economic conditions create a profit motive for detention, the climate of individualism shifts the blame for diminished opportunities onto young women themselves. In terms of leisure, Harris cites an emergence of regimented after-school activities and the rise of surveillance technology being employed on the streets and in shopping malls. Extended review 413 There are also increasing numbers of privatised youth spaces such as bowling alleys and cinema complexes centred on consumption. This restructuring/regulating of leisure, Harris contends, has produced a young female subject who is self-policing and consumption oriented. Chapter five examines the regulation of young women’s private lives and the incitement for them to display their private selves for public scrutiny. The display of interiority, Harris argues, has become linked to successful living, but the emphasis on voice is occurring at a time in which young people have few opportunities for unmediated expression. Harris contends that mass communication, new technologies and globalised popular culture have generated ‘an invitation to public visibility for young women’ (p. 126). In line with the ethos of self-invention, the ordinary young person is encouraged to see him/herself as a celebrity project, and the media shows how ordinariness can be overcome in makeover and DIY shows, and presents the stories and opinions of ordinary people as entertainment and legitimate sources of knowledge. The display of the private self is aligned with success for can-dos, but is required of at-risks as well: Harris cites the growing public display of ‘rectifying’ aberrant young women through television chat shows and self-help books, the use of mechanisms such as tracking devices/offender bracelets, and the increasing trend for demanding public statements of personal responsibility from offenders. Alongside this regulation of interiority, Harris cites an increased management of young people’s participation in the public sphere. Policy packages, leadership programmes, and government-run and commercial leisure activities aim to increase youth civic engagement, and citizenship education has been introduced in schools throughout the West. Youth participation has come to mean displaying oneself and speaking out in highly managed spaces, and girls in particular are encouraged by governments, media and certain strands of feminism, to ‘find their voices’. This popular psychological focus on lack of confidence and socialisation into femininity positions adults as expert mediators of young women’s voices while positioning young women’s perspectives as secondary to celebrating ‘voice’ for its own sake. The implications of this, Harris argues, are threefold: first, particular models of successful young womanhood are produced through regulation of young women’s private lives; second, the regulation of participation and speaking shuts down opportunities for critique; and, third, the emphasis on young women’s personal barriers to civic engagement conceals the disappearance of a genuine public sphere. Chapter six focuses on how young women create and retain spaces where hegemonic discourses can be questioned and challenged. Harris explores what she terms ‘border spaces’—spaces that have grown up around writing, alternative media, artwork, and the Internet—and argues that these are crucial sites of resistance for young women. She also examines more informal activities at local level such as friendship networks through which young women support each other and carve out unregulated spaces for themselves. Harris argues that these spaces are spaces in which constructions of the future girl can be debated, challenged and perhaps reworked. Four main issues, Harris argues, are addressed in young women’s border spaces: the 414 Extended review discourses of success and self-invention versus risk and failure, the construction of girls as passive consumer citizens, the construction of girls as compliant ambassadresses, and the ideas of voice and participation. Border spaces problematise the image of the successful, self-inventing ‘can-do’ girl, challenging the idea that girls are content to purchase such an image, and critiquing popular constructions of successful young womanhood. They also challenge the ‘shadow’ image of girls as risky subjects, parodying their construction as ‘social scum’, disrupting assumptions about personal pathologies and choices, citing the role of socio-economic conditions and critiquing the intervention programmes involved in the production and management of at-risk girlhood. Many of these border spaces, Harris argues, also present a critique of consumption and materialism, encouraging young women to actively produce their identities and cultures, and shape their own communities, rather than simply consuming identities that are being marketed to them. These young women, Harris contends, are refiguring their citizenship in terms of production rather than consumption. This runs alongside a critique of the idea of young women as the new face of multiculturalism, constructed through resources against racism and nationalism that also problematise emerging narratives around patriotism and cultural cohesion. Concerns are also raised in these spaces about the framework of youth voice and its relationship to both ‘commodification and the construction of compliant subjects’ (p. 177). One of the messages emanating from these spaces is that young women feel that those in power are not to be trusted, and will therefore reject mainstream forms of participation and inclusion. Harris concludes that young women’s border spaces need to be taken seriously, as they have opened up new avenues for participation, although their political potential is difficult to quantify since their relationship to the mainstream is unclear. To sum up, Future Girl offers a complex and engaging discussion, although it could be suggested that Harris’ claim to have defined two new cultural archetypes that act as conduits for worries about unknown futures throughout the western and post-communist world demands more evidence than is offered. A great deal of secondary literature is used, and examples from the media and popular culture are presented, but the book does not introduce a body of primary empirical data. Nevertheless, a narrative is constructed around some fascinating themes, and Harris’ points about the intersection between neoliberal ideologies and global economic changes in the production of young femininities are very well elucidated. Her references to the impact of feminism on the creation of the category of the ‘future girl’ and concomitant implication that feminism has been co-opted by neoliberalism were interesting and could have been developed further; and largely absent from the discussion was a detailed analysis of the centrality of heterosexuality to the production of young femininities (see, for example, Renold, 2000; Youdell, 2005), although this issue was mentioned in the section concerned with normative femininities and schooling. Overall, Future Girl will be of great interest to the British Journal of Sociology of Education audience as well as others, and could provide a valuable theoretical backdrop for in-depth sociological studies. Extended review 415 References Francis, B. (1999) Lads, lasses and (new) labour: 14–16-year-old students’ responses to the ‘laddish behaviour and boys’ underachievement’ debate, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(3), 355–371. Renold, E. (2000) ‘Coming out’: gender, (hetero)sexuality and the primary school, Gender and Education, 12(3), 309–326. Skelton, C. (1998) Feminism and research into masculinities and schooling, Gender and Education, 10(2), 217–227. Youdell, D. (2005) Sex–gender–sexuality: how sex, gender, and sexuality constellations are constituted in secondary schools, Gender and Education, 17(3), 249–270.