Conclusions

Abstract

Bourdieu (2001: 102) argued that the researcher must examine gender relations ‘in the whole set of social spaces and subspaces’ including, occupational spaces, ‘to explode the fantastical image of the “eternal feminine”’. This book has taken up Bourdieusian and feminist-Bourdieusian concepts in order to do just this, but also to examine how class is implicated in feminising processes. Making use of four ‘case study’ occupations, I have shown how there is both proximity and distance between feminised jobs and their participants and this is influenced by the capitals that are valued in these spaces and the statuses and capitals held by the workers they attract. In addition, occupations are implicated in the production and reproduction of workers’ identities, capitals and practices. A number of findings were therefore consistent across the four occupations and so may be applicable to other forms of feminised work. In this last chapter I will discuss some of these consistencies that occurred in the workers’ stories and the relevance of these findings for understanding emotional and aesthetic labour, gendered occupational segregation, gender capital and for ‘using Bourdieu’.