Collecting women's lives: The challenge of feminism in UK Youth Work in the 1970s and 80s

Spence, J.

doi:10.1080/09612020903444734

Collecting women's lives: The challenge of feminism in UK Youth Work in the 1970s and 80s

Spence, J.

Authors

J. Spence

Abstract

A distinctively feminist youth work movement which flourished between the mid 1970s and the late 1980s has been submerged by organisational change. The feminist political critique which encouraged young women's agency has been replaced by equal opportunities policies and problem-based interventions. Documentary evidence of feminist youth work is now scattered, in danger of being lost like the history of the pre-war Girls' Club Movement which succumbed to 'mixed sex' approaches. This article is informed by the evidence in a small private archive, by empirical research with women youth workers undertaken in North-East England in 1988 and 1993 and by the author's personal recollections. It discusses how feminist efforts to enhance the agency and autonomy of working-class young women and of female youth workers were fractured in the drive towards centralised managerial control characteristic of public sector conditions after the election of the Conservative Government in 1979.

Citation

Spence, J. (2010). Collecting women's lives: The challenge of feminism in UK Youth Work in the 1970s and 80s. Women's History Review, 19(1), 159-176. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612020903444734

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Feb 1, 2010
Deposit Date	Feb 10, 2010
Publicly Available Date	Sep 1, 2011
Journal	Women's History Review
Print ISSN	0961-2025
Electronic ISSN	1747-583X
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	19
Issue	1
Pages	159-176
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/09612020903444734