ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts covered in the preceding chapters of the book. This book was framed around a series of questions which sought to elicit the nature of identity and difference in higher education in Britain. The majority of contributors focus on gender as a key signifier of difference. This is an inevitable consequence of a research focus only upon groups of women, or of writing autobiographically. Pauline Anderson and Pam Lunn highlight the use of differential public and academic discourses linked to social class. Pauline Anderson explores the processes and practices which inscribe working-class women as 'inferior bearers of knowledge'. Pam Lunn notes how the middle-class respondents in her study have access to, and use, quite different explanations of their identity dilemmas than her working class interviewees. The social designations prioritised as key signifiers of difference inform the contributors' understanding of the interplay between social location and gendered identities.
