‘No Bleeding, Whining Minnies’: Some Perspectives on the Role of YTS in Class and Gender Reproduction

Abstract

This paper is about social class, gender, the Youth Training Scheme and social reproduction, which are explored in the context of entry into ‘caring’ careers. The data is drawn from one of a group of ethnographic studies being undertaken within the context of the ESRC 16‐19 Initiative. This particular study is based on participant observation with a group of 16 to 18 year old girls training for jobs in the field of institutional care. The paper begins by exploring aspects of the girls’ experience of their training and work placements. These involve physically and emotionally stressful tasks such as coping with violence, dealing with incontinence and laying out the dead. The paper then documents a gradual process of adjustment to this type of work which ends with the girls positively seeking work in this field. This provides a basis for posing the central questions of the paper: why do working‐class girls continue to enter working‐class, gender‐stereotyped jobs? What roles does the Youth Training Scheme play in promoting their adjustment? An explanatory framework is then developed which revolves around: features of the occupational culture of institutional care; aspects of gender socialisation in the context of working‐class families; specific functions of the hidden and visible curriculum of the YTS programme; and the wider context of youth unemployment and job scarcity.