ABSTRACT
Any analysis of patterns of educational attainment will at some point focus on the fact that females have higher levels of attainment than males across social class, ethnicity and gender categories. This becomes less of a shock when it is recognised that both the school and work environments are saturated with values and attitudes rooted in stereotypes and essentialist understandings of masculinity and femininity which embody assumptions about women’s responsibility for childcare and who has access to what type of work. The chapter explores the impact of the attitudes and how they contribute to an understanding of the contradiction between women’s educational achievements and their experiences of the workplace. It also explores how the power relations translate into discrimination and unequal access to work opportunities. For women to access the labour market without discrimination, change needs to occur in cultural attitudes and practices within the family as well as in the workplace.
