ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three key theoretical concepts, namely, gender, ‘race’, and class, and how they influence pathways into and through higher education and into the workforce. This includes a consideration of the wider debates and discourses on gender, ‘race’, and class as they relate to the processes and practices in education, the development of professional identities, and career trajectories, particularly in relation to the Children’s Workforce. It also considers how these divisions intersect to create complex, multifaceted patterns of inequality, with profound implications on individual lived experiences and life chances. The final section introduces the theoretical framework for the study which draws on the work of Bourdieu (1994; 1997; 1998), Hill Collins (1990), Hochschild (1983;1988), and Smith (1987) in order to explore how experiences of gender, ‘race’, and class are profoundly shaped by powerful structures and organisations in society. In combination, their ideas assist in drawing attention to how structural factors operate and interact across different levels in society, and how this affects individual actions across different sites. The analysis is developed further with the work of Andrew (2015), Block and Corona (2014), Bowleg (2008), Davies (2008), Nichols and Griffith (2009), O’Brien (2008), Prodinger and Turner (2013), and Walby (2013) in relation to some of the more specific complexities that emerge from the research.
