Young women, agency and intimacy in sexual relationships
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Thomas Coram Research Unit
Abstract
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Organisations
Publications
Maxwell C
(2010)
The bubble of privilege. Young, privately educated women talk about social class
in British Journal of Sociology of Education
Maxwell C
(2010)
Agency in action - young women and their sexual relationships in a private school
in Gender and Education
Maxwell C
(2012)
Bodies and Agentic Practice in Young Women's Sexual and Intimate Relationships
in Sociology
| Description | The main theoretical focus of the study (as defined in the first three research questions) was further to develop concepts of agentic practice, with particular reference to young women's experiences of sexual and intimate relationships. A review of the main theoretical frameworks used to date led us to identify two significant limitations to the way the concept is being interpreted (as outlined in the Background section above). We therefore aimed to develop a 'third way' of understanding agency, which does not situate itself within a Butlerian or Bourdieuian framework, but takes as its starting point the ways in which young women understand and describe 'power' within sexual and intimate relationships. Engaging with the concept of 'power' directly seems crucial for any study on agentic practice for, as McNay (2008) argues, 'practice is both the product of power relations that have been internalized into the body and also an active engagement with social structures' (p.185). Using the newly developed concept of 'agency in action', we explored how young women's understandings of power appeared to be linked to their overall approach to sexual and intimate relationships. How young women understood and positioned themselves within their relationships enabled us to identify various types of agentic practice underpinned by the understandings of power described. Young women in this study used words such as 'choice' and 'control' to describe their engagement with power relations. Power was either seen as a relational concept - a resource that was shared between two people (usually unequally), or young women would describe themselves as simply powerful within their relationships. Using the first understanding of power, we found that they were able to describe many situations where they had experienced an inequality of power between themselves and their sexual or intimate partner, which had provoked an emotional reaction. This, then, appeared to motivate them to 'take action' and fight to 'take power back' which we have argued is one important form of agentic practice. Drawing on their descriptions of themselves as powerful, young women identified at least four ways in which such a positioning informed their approaches to, and experiences of, sexual and intimate relationships. Some described how they actively took an 'I decide' approach to relationships and sex. Young women also linked power with being confident, not being taken advantage of, but also with holding what might be called an 'ambivalent' attitude to sex and relationships in which they professed to being too young to be too committed to one particular relationship and ought instead to focus on 'having fun'. All these approaches to relationships and sex, underpinned by a positioning of the self as simply powerful, offer ways of illuminating what 'agentic practice' can look like and what drives it. The next phase of analysis explored how 'the body' and the physicality of sex might help to understand agentic practice within sexual and intimate relationships. Young women described many instances in which they had experienced strong physical reactions to people and sex. Strong sensations created by the presence of certain others and their 'bodies'. Young women articulated vividly how sex was experienced - especially pleasure. Some participants described themselves as a 'sexual person'. Such narratives are relatively unreported on in the current literature, especially in research on young women. The physical aspects of sex and intimacy and the realness of bodily sensations within such experiences, were found to drive agentic practice in three key ways. Young women described how the physical nature of sex and attraction was almost uncontrollable and instinctual, and how it often directed what happened next in a situation without 'conscious' thought. Young women also explained that physical reactions or sensations experienced towards a partner or within an encounter led them to make more rationally-driven decisions about what to do next or how to approach sex and relationships in the future. Finally, participants described how growing confidence about their bodies, better understanding of the kinds of sexual acts they gained pleasure from, and the desire to take a lead in initiating sex or sexual experimentation made them more confident and likely to take control of intimate relationships and sexual interactions with young men. Subsequent to these analyses of agentic practice, we have considered how such practice might become sustained over time. One way young women described a sustained change in their practice was when the experience of inequality of power within a relationship or sexual experience led to strong emotional and/or physical reactions, which in turn led them to make a decision about how to manage future experiences. For a number of young women, decisions about the future made following such experiences appeared to have been sustained, (their narratives were often chronologically structured). Second, young women who positioned themselves as powerful suggested their approach to relationships and sex was often confident, assertive, and therefore arguably agentic, although it was not possible to conclude with certainty the degree to which such a powerful positioning was maintained over time, as young women were only interviewed on one occasion. Third, even those young women who did not position themselves as powerful in any consistent way, identified another route through which they became powerful in their relationships - through a growing confidence about what they wanted from sex and in the management of the physical side of their relationships. Given the focus on middle class young women in this study we have begun to examine how socio-economic privilege might be associated with the forms of agentic practice identified. This will be the focus of the fourth paper to emerge from the study, which is currently being written. Our initial analyses suggest that the relatively wealthy backgrounds they come and the opportunities this created for these young women to travel and socialise across a number of relatively elite peer networks (mainly within the 'public school scene' as one participant described it) may well support the powerful positioning some young women took within their relationships. Their lives in many ways resembled the popular media 'top girl' discourse (McRobbie, 2007). It is likely that the young women in the study were influenced by such a discourse, and a number explained that their sexual and intimate relationships were only part, though often an important part, of their worlds. Some discussed how they did not want to take a gap year or start university while in an already established relationship - they were keen instead to make the most of the new experiences awaiting them, which included being free from the demands of a relationship, allowing experimentation with other types of sexual and intimate experiences. Our research also suggests that the often unchallenged association between higher socio-economic class position and agency in other writing (see Youdell, 2005 for instance) is not as straightforward as is sometimes assumed. The culture of the school these young women attended was described by them as one in which femininity and heterosexuality were highly regulated (such as through what was considered 'attractive', the expectation that girls should be (hetero)sexually active, and the assumption that young women should not appear too overtly 'clever'). Such a school culture arguably should shut down possibilities for agency. Furthermore, many young women described their families as quite traditionally structured - in which fathers had careers and mothers stayed at home to look after the children. Again, this is arguably not necessarily a backdrop for promoting active, confident attitudes to femininity and sexuality. The data generated in both the focus group discussions and interviews led us to explore the ways in which young women described themselves in relation to others - both working class and middle class peers. We have therefore been able to add to the small, but growing literature on the existence of different fractions within the rather broad 'middle class' (i.e. middle class 'fractions' - Bernstein, 1975: 19; Ball et al., 2004: 478) by bringing in the voices of a relatively neglected group of respondents: privileged young women. While young women in this study did discuss the existence of the working class, who they usually described as 'Chavs', respondents spent more time differentiating themselves from their peers within the school. It is in these sections of narrative that our study has been able to contribute most uniquely to current literature. Fractions and points of difference between students focused on the type of schools previously attended (private or state), how much money their families had, whether parents had had to work for this wealth, and different kinds of moral values. We plan to write a fifth paper from the study during 2010, which will explore further how Bernstein's and Bourdieu's conceptual tools may be used to make sense of the above findings on social class. The above summary sets out the study's main research findings in relation to its overall aim and the first three research questions. Our fourth research question, which aimed to assess the relative merits of focus group discussions and in-depth interviews for exploring agency within sexual and intimate relationships will be explored in conference presentations and other papers. Importantly, focus groups were, in our opinion, a crucial part of our methodological approach: providing an excellent fora for introducing the young women to the PI and the research topic; creating a 'buzz' about the study within the school which probably led to an increased interest in participating in the interview phase of the research; yielding important contextual information about the school culture in relation to femininity and sexuality; and providing some unexpected data around how young women positioned themselves in relation to others, with reference to social class. These two methods complemented each other and offered different ways of generating narratives and insights relevant to the same broad subject. |
| Exploitation Route | Drawing on new approaches to understanding agency within young women's sexual and intimate relationships - new approaches to sexuality and relationship education work can be developed in schools but also in out-of-school settings. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy |
| URL | http://www.ioe.ac.uk/research/79374.html |