Mature women and the EdD: changing identity and family relationships

Abstract

This project investigated the impact of postgraduate study on mature women students and their families. It built on my previous EdD thesis research with Foundation Degree (FD) students regarding HE study for mature women, identity change and family relationships. My previous findings showed women's identity and confidence changed, this then affected family relationships through a change in roles, changes to childcare approaches, changes in attitude and the perspective of woman students which often rubbed off onto husbands (Webber, 2015). Husbands and children were good producers of family capital and provided capital in the forms of social, economic, cultural and emotional capital. There were three reasons why husbands provided family capital (financial gain, strength of the relationship between husband and wife, and husband previously having experience of HE). This project builds on this research and explores whether these findings are similar for women students on Professional Doctorate (PD) programmes.