ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way in which the identities of a number of mature women students have been, and still continue to be, constrained by their social location as women. It then discusses the ways in which they have been empowered by education to recreate and modify different aspects of their identity rather than it being determined and totally constrained by others. The writing is based on qualitative research conducted in and around a northern city, in which relatively unstructured interviews took place with forty-nine mature women returners to learning. The women were studying on a variety of courses such as basic English in a neighbourhood centre in a deprived area, motor mechanics, technology, access courses in further education and degree courses in the universities in the area. The role of education in the women's desire to re-shape at least a part of their identity was evident in a number of ways in all their accounts.
