Interviews with 43 mature women students were followed 10 years later by interviews with 23 of them. The experience of education provided them a means of self-evaluation. Most worked in teaching, social work, or the public sector, which reduced potential dilemmas about self-perception and enabled an expressive rather than an instrumental view of…

Explores the relationship between education and female sex roles through both the theoretical literature about the reproduction of domesticity in the education system and through a study of mature university women students' attitudes to the role of education in their educational and occupational aspirations and opportunities. (JB)