Resumen de Gender, bigotry, class or cash? Educating poor Catholic girls in Nineteenth-Century Birkenhead and Liverpool
When researching the effects of a series of nineteenth-century Education Acts on the educational provision for poor Catholic girls in Birkenhead and Liverpool, the expectation was that academic identities, policies, and practices would be limited chiefly by gender, class, and religion. Gender would influence their situation because girls were socially and culturally marginalised and much of the education available at this time was domestically orientated. Class would be significant because poor Catholic girls had little social status and consequently had limited chance of realising cultural capital. Finally, religious ideology and bigotry was such an inherent part of life in the area at the time that it seemed inevitable it must have a restricting role on education. However, while these concepts were influential, evidence suggests that financial considerations were more significant in this locality at this time. The poor Catholic girls appear to have had an individuality in relation to their academic identity which affected their ability to access education. Therefore, the argument proposed is that financial difficulties were the most significant problem faced by poor Catholic girls in accessing education in the period 1833 to the late 1870s in Liverpool and Birkenhead.
