Getting by or getting on: gender, intergenerational earning and caring in deindustrialising localities in Lanarkshire, Scotland
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article explores how British working-class households have navigated deindustrialisation, rising economic inequality and the changing provision of public services since the mid-twentieth century. It examines how these changes have been interpreted using oral history testimonies from people born between the 1940s and the 1970s who have lived and worked their entire lives in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Two juxtaposed narratives of ‘getting on’ and ‘getting by’ structured these recollections, which were primarily recorded with women interviewees. ‘Getting on’ centred on social mobility associated with material improvements, private homeownership and professional white-collar employment. Conversely, ‘getting by’ was underpinned by the struggle for survival in difficult circumstances conditioned by industrial job losses, dwindling public housing stocks and diminishing public transport and green space. We analysed these narratives across three themes: household budgeting, the commodification of housing through council house sales, and social and familial care. The diverging narratives nevertheless coalesce in demonstrating the centrality of the household unit for economic strategising which was increasingly characterised by vernacular equality in companionate marriages. They also demonstrate the centrality of women’s paid and unpaid caring work but underline a communal loss associated with diminished public resources even among those who got on.
Source: Social History
Authors: Ewan Gibbs, Gillian Murray, Janet Greenlees
Institutions: University of Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7119458327
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