Structure and agency : changes in personal agency in the life domain of young women in Malta

Abstract

This article examines changes in the degree of personal agency in young women, with post–compulsory education, in the last 50 years in a Southern European reality. It explores strategies of negotiation and resistance to social and cultural conditions, such as restrictive legislation, in a relatively traditional context. The arguments brought forward are positioned broadly within a discourse of individualization—on how women are more than ever devising their lives on their own free-will. There are various structural and cultural changes that had direct impact on the changes in females’ personal agency. This article focuses on three of them—the influence of the church, restrictive legislation, and the expansion and extension of the educational system. The data drawn on for this article are taken from interviews conducted in Malta, with two generations of women who were in post–compulsory education in their youth, yet experienced their youth 50 years apart. The implications brought forward include a need for assessing how female agency operates in a relatively more traditional setting in a paradoxical manner. Their degree of female agency demonstrates complex strategies of accommodation and negotiation in line with socioeconomic and cultural conditions.