ABSTRACT
The transition from school to work has been conceived in the academic world as the moment when a young person leaves school and enters into another world, the world of paid work. This change in status is dramatic and critical for adult life. It represents the move from dependence to independence, from unpaid to paid, from youth to adulthood (Willis, 1977). But such a conception is based on the experience of dominant groups under industrial capitalism; it is far from universal. Many never achieve a position in the paid labour force, and the whole idea avoids the unemployed, as well as the domestic, subsistence and informal economies. Even within dominant Western modes, it fails to come to terms with the experience of women, who have always had a more fluid relation to learning and paid work, moving in and out of the labour market as their domestic responsibilities and financial needs shift, learning the tasks necessary for adulthood in formal and informal ways. This kind of experience has disadvantaged women, or perhaps been a sign of their disadvantaged status.
