ABSTRACT
In recent years, a great deal of attention has been given to the study of women’s employment in Britain (Dex, 1985). However, there has been relatively little work undertaken on the occupational mobility of women adopting the methodological and theoretical traditions of conventional social mobility research (Payne, 1976b; Chapman, 1984). Such an exercise is not without its problems, in particular with regard to the basic conceptualization of female class mobility (see Britten and Heath, 1983; Dale et al., 1985). Even when, as in this chapter, we are concerned with inequalities of occupational opportunity rather than the broader issues of class structure, consciousness and action, several analytical problems arise.
