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One proposed strategy to overcome labour shortages in male-dominated jobs is to attract female workers. This has been the case for lorry driving in the UK. These efforts, however, often work to reproduce binary gendered stereotypes, or seek to include women without questioning how working conditions and everyday embodied work itself constructs gender roles and difference and is differentially experienced. In this paper, we highlight differentiated lorry driving bodies at work, centring lorries as an essential part of global logistical systems. Empirically drawing from interviews and mobile ethnographies with freight drivers in England, we tell a series of composite stories which uncover gendered ideals of worker-bodies, and embodied experiences of mobilities. With the gendered, embodied life's work of lorry driving remaining largely invisible and poorly understood, we illustrate the complex intersections between places, people, materialities and forms of work. Through this paper, we show how (gendered) narratives and bodily difference are both reproduced and disrupted through lorry driving work. We argue that only through recognising – and destabilising - the gendered re/production of mobile work will other logistical futures be made possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers gender and social class in relation to teacher education through an episodic study of the development of adult educational institutions in Huddersfield. It briefly discusses nineteenth-century mechanics' institutes in the town before moving to a consideration of school teacher training college students in the twentieth century, highlighting aspects of the gendered and cultural ethos of teacher training. Local efforts to establish teacher training, and the wartime presence in the town of an evacuated women's teacher training college, provide a prism for the examination of transitions in social attitudes towards teaching as a profession, as do the educational aspirations of local working-class grammar school girls and boys during the 1940s/1950s. The paper then focuses on the establishment in 1963 of a 'new kind' of non-residential teacher training college and, in particular, on its introduction in the late 1960s of part-time provision designed specifically for 'married women'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are long-standing achievement gaps in England associated with socio-economic status (SES), ethnicity and gender, but relatively little research has evaluated interactions between these variables or explored school effects on such gaps. This paper analyses the national test results at age 7 and age 11 of 2,836 pupils attending 68 mainstream primary schools in an ethnically diverse inner London borough. The groups with the lowest educational achievement and poorest progress were both Black Caribbean and White British low SES pupils. White British middle and high SES pupils made substantially more progress than White British low SES pupils, significantly increasing the SES gap over time. However low and high SES Black pupils made equally poor progress age 7–11. School effects on pupil progress were large, but there was no evidence of differential school effectiveness in relation to SES, ethnicity or gender. Low SES pupils in the more effective schools performed significantly better than high SES pupils in the less effective schools, but all pupils (both low and high SES) benefit from attending the more effective schools and so these schools do not eliminate the SES gap. The limits to change that may be achieved by schools alone are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we considered women's experiences of undertaking Higher Education (HE) study (Foundation Degree in Early Years (EY)) drawing on research based in the North of England, UK. The study, informed by a social constructionist approach, explored 10 women's experiences of work–life balance (WLB) and well-being alongside HE study through semi-structured interviews. A focus group explored women's personal perceptions of WLB and well-being. The findings were analysed thematically and we argue that the formation of a third sphere of commitment (HE study) disrupted WLB and created some disequilibrium, which impacted upon the women's well-being. The women underwent a transformative process as initial academic inexperience and lack of belonging in University was replaced by confidence and student identity. This transformation was made possible through personal adaptations, diverse strategies and motivation that indicated individual and collective resilience. One noticeable strategy involved the overlapping of commitment spheres, including HE study taking place at home. While being challenging to manage, this contributed to an important cultural shift as study became normal for households, creating the 'learning family'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the changing nature of Birmingham's Jewish com munity over a hundred-year period. By focusing on the ways in which Jews were portrayed by non-Jews and how Jews saw themselves, it attempts to illuminate the early history of the Jewish community at the end of the eighteenth century, including the synagogue as a focus of meaning; identity and organisation; how Jews and non-Jews related to one another; Jewish collective action to defend and promote their interests; the importance of funeral rituals and burial; rich and poor Jews; and Jewish women. Jewish experiences and representations not only throw light on the history of AngloJewry, but illuminate the attitudes, fears and prejudices of Birmingham's British society and ways in which others are portrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the bidding process for the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) award, an aspect of local regeneration policy reliant upon a specific conception of culture. The process is examined in terms of changes in urban layout, manifestations of cultural and community identity, media representations, and the spectacle of culture, gender, and locality. The process is viewed as an urban managerialist project, driven by private and public sector elites in pursuit of economic rather than cultural goals. A narrow and particular view of culture was employed in the bidding process to achieve essentially managerial goals, and cut adrift from significant issues of gender, identity, and class. 'Culture,' as conceived within the ECOC process, is viewed as a policy product of local government, regeneration partnerships, government agencies, and business interests, in contrast to culture as a way of life or lived urban experience. As an elite process, the voices of local culture were largely excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established that the workplace provides an important site for the production of gender identities. However, it is less-well understood how this identity construction might operate in the context of migrant workers, who bring with them particular notions of gender from their countries of origin that interact with 'local' gender practices. Through an in-depth case study of a London hotel and hospital, masculinity and economic status were observed to be intricately related in the ways in which male migrants described their work performances in terms of either 'women's work' or 'lower-class work'. Men originating from middle- and upper-class economic positions were observed to be 'flexible' with their economic identity and take on work considered 'lower-class' in their country of origin in order to contest their gender identities in the UK. In contrast, men who migrated for economic gain and had family obligations to send remittances were observed to be 'strategically' flexible with their gender identities and often performed what they considered to be 'women's work' in order to be able to fulfil economic expectations. We suggest that a migrant's willingness and/or desire to enact 'flexible and strategic masculinities' is tied to the perceived trade-offs of his/her employment in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local authority planning departments within the United Kingdom are required to undertake gender mainstreaming as a result of European Union and domestic government requirements. However, research undertaken for the Royal Town Planning Institute demonstrates that few local authorities are doing so. A mêlée of competing equality and diversity considerations at local government level limits the attention given to gender considerations. A review of national policy guidance and planning law indicates that central government is taking an equivocal stance towards gender. It is concluded that before effective gender mainstreaming can take place institutional difficulties and underlying conceptual ambiguities need to be resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]