Something to show for it: the place of mementoes in women’s oral histories of work

Workplace memorabilia, regarded here as artifacts and mementoes kept from workplaces and stored in homes, is varied, including; tools of a trade, ephemeral leaflets and pamphlets, union mementoes, uniforms and badges, long service awards, gifts from colleagues, and photographs both formal and informal. These objects can symbolize many years of work-life history and the corollary of this, their absence, perhaps the need to forget the drudgery of ‘the daily grind’. The materiality of an object saved or taken from the workplace often prompts reminiscence (Bornat, 2001) but can also, in itself and its method of display, represent and express key identities, work processes and traditions. Using examples from a three year ESRC funded project on work and identity this paper focuses on the women who participated in the study and investigates what is kept or not, whether the ways in which work memorabilia is displayed or stored is gendered, and how this might illuminate gendered social relations in the workplace and gendered work identities.

Is childhood a 'disability'? Exploring the exclusion of children from age discrimination provisions in the Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 was enacted with the aim of simplifying existing equality legislation and included extending age discrimination protection beyond the workplace to cover the provision of goods, facilities and services. Under-18s, however, were omitted from such provisions, despite lobbying from a number of different organisations and parliamentarians. This article considers the significance of this exclusion. It both challenges the legitimacy of the decision to exclude children, and considers the difficulties that arise from including under-18s within age discrimination provisions, namely those relating to children’s autonomy, capacity and right to equal treatment. In particular, it asks whether the question of children’s capacity to make decisions, the main ground on which children are denied all the human rights enjoyed by adults, should be revisited in light of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, under which a finding of incapacity on the basis of disability constitutes discrimination. It goes on to explore other areas of convergence between childhood and disability studies, and particularly the benefits, and shortcomings, of a ‘social model’ approach to childhood.

Negotiating queer and religious identities in higher education: queering ‘progression’ in the ‘university experience’

This article addresses the negotiation of ‘queer religious’ student identities in UK higher education. The ‘university experience’ has generally been characterised as a period of intense transformation and self-exploration, with complex and overlapping personal and social influences significantly shaping educational spaces, subjects and subjectivities. Engaging with ideas about progressive tolerance and becoming, often contrasted against ‘backwards’ religious homophobia as a sentiment/space/subject ‘outside’ education, this article follows the experiences and expectations of queer Christian students. In asking whether notions of ‘queering higher education’ (Rumens 2014 Rumens, N. 2014. “Queer Business: Towards Queering the Purpose of the Business School.” In The Entrepreneurial University: Public Engagements, Intersecting Impacts, edited by Y. Taylor, 82–104. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.) ‘fit’ with queer-identifying religious youth, the article explores how educational experiences are narrated and made sense of as ‘progressive’. Educational transitions allow (some) sexual-religious subjects to negotiate identities more freely, albeit with ongoing constraints. Yet perceptions of what, where and who is deemed ‘progressive’ and ‘backwards’ with regard to sexuality and religion need to be met with caution, where the ‘university experience’ can shape and shake sexual-religious identity.