The Education Library Team love to showcase the wonderful work of our Faculty of Education community and would like to thank PhD student Anna Maria Del Fiorentino for her guest blog post about her current research here at the Education Faculty and introducing her publication Breaking the Cycle of Women’s Paid Domestic Work in Brazil : A Study of Mothers and Daughters
Available as an Ebook from our Education Ebook Collection in the following sections:
Education in America (North & South)
Gender & Education
Higher Education
Sociology
Sociology of Education
Introducing Anna
Anna is a full time PhD candidate here at the Education Faculty and we are thrilled to share her guest blog post below.
Guest Blog Post About My Book Published in 2023 and Current PhD Research at the Faculty.
I am Anna, a Brazilian living in the UK since 2008, and a mature student-parent pursuing a PhD at the Faculty of Education. Additionally, I am a mother of two children in primary school and have been settled with my family in Cambridge since 2019 after living in London for many years, where my children were born.
“Life begins at forty”
Pursuing further education as a means to achieve a better work-life balance, I embarked on my master’s journey at the Centre of Latin American Studies (CLAS) in Cambridge in 2019. I wasn’t entirely certain of what lay ahead when I attended the university’s open day while residing in London and submitted my project with little hope of securing a place. However, I was offered a place and joined a growing group of under-represented students at Cambridge who often battle with impostor syndrome, one of the most common words I hear since I started my journey at Cambridge.
Reflecting upon the few mature students I encountered during my undergraduate studies in Economics, which feels like ancient history now, I find myself in their shoes. Despite the challenges of ageism, sexism, and other forms of bias that women encounter daily, I’ve discovered a remarkable aspect of being a student in my forties: clarity of purpose. I know what I want to research and am driven by a deep desire to engage in meaningful work while also having a good time. Interviewing my participants and learning about their extraordinary life stories is the best part of my work. This drive not only fulfils me personally but also sets an example for my children, showing that we can all contribute to the pursuit of a fairer world in various ways.
I’ve chosen to dive into subjects close to my heart: gender disparities, social inequality, and inequalities in general. Mental health and well-being, topics barely explored during my generation’s time, have now gained prominence in the academic landscape. They have become the focal point of my studies, a quest to understand how education can improve lives, especially those of women, beyond the material aspects — but including them. My MPhil study demonstrated that women, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, who are first-generation university students, have the potential to break intergenerational cycles of limited access to education and to ‘good’ jobs. These cycles perpetuate material poverty and poor mental health among the women in their families. However, this journey is not without immense pressure, which could threaten the attainment of a degree. In some cases, even if they manage to obtain a degree, the university experience is so challenging that a degree may come at the expense of their mental health and well-being. In short, my study aims to explore how to combine potential upward social mobility experienced by women first-generation university students with good mental health and well-being—upward mobility in material terms but also emotionally and psychologically.
“Whatever we inherit from the fortunate / We have taken from the defeated” (T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets)
If one word can be used to describe my research, it is “inequalities”. I see inequality as the concept that advantages for some may come at the cost of disadvantages for others. I often illustrate this with an analogy to a mathematical scenario where a balance of zero arises because some have +1 while others have -1.
During my master’s studies, I focused on women who are the first generation within their families to achieve higher education degrees in Brazil in the 21st century. Equally, I studied their mothers. Society often concentrates its attention on the new generation, the youth and children — a necessary focus. However, mature individuals, often deemed a “lost generation”, tend to be overlooked, particularly by public and university policies. I include ‘the mothers’ of women first-generation university students in my research with the aim of shedding light on the often-invisible role of mothers — like myself — and emphasizing the immense caregiving and reproductive work they undertake within their homes, work that is often taken for granted. The same undervalued labour in society is often the most crucial within their daughters’ realm, as it creates material and emotional conditions to empower daughters to pursue higher education.
Intertwined Memories
I sought to demonstrate through my MPhil research that these daughters did not reach their achievements alone — their successes were also the achievements of their families, especially their mothers, who not only supported them materially but also empowered them throughout this journey. As record numbers of state-school and Black women are first-generation university students in the 21st century in Brazil, widely explained by government and university affirmative actions to enhance diversity in student intake only, I wanted to highlight the vital role of their mothers in their educational journeys towards university.
Many of these mothers were illiterate or had limited formal education, yet they harboured dreams of seeing their daughters attend university, a dream carried by the mother’s generation and the generations before them. A dream that was shared by their daughter’s generation that finally became a reality but only in the 21st century. My study shows that, in times of economic growth and job creation in Brazil, when daughters overcome poverty and achieve a better life after obtaining a degree, it triggers a healing process related to the traumatic memories and postmemory they carry. This process benefits both mothers and daughters, creating a positive ripple effect. This occurs because they are now more likely to assist their mothers financially, and also because their mothers share in their daughters’ victories, experiencing greater happiness and fulfilment through their children’s achievements, as they see these successes as their own, carrying this joy over into their lives. I named this dynamic of memory exchange between mothers and daughters “intertwined memories”, a fusion of post-memory and its positive counterpart. This occurs during the healing process in these women’s lives when traumatic memories are overcome, and joyful ones are simultaneously imprinted on women first-generation, bouncing back to their mothers. These are not just ordinary happy memories but positive recollections with the strength to break vicious generational cycles. In cases where first-generation university student daughters already had their own children, my study demonstrated that these children had a better start in life, being better off compared to their mothers and the generation before them. They not only had access to basic needs—often having access to much more than basic needs —but also potentially carried and shared less trauma.
“A Job to Read and Write”
Ken Loach’s classic movie “Kes” was a significant inspiration for my research. In fact, I was so inspired by it that I named one of my book chapters after it: “A Job to Read and Write”. This chapter captures the aspirations of first-generation university students, who dream of escaping precarious jobs like their parents’, dreaming of “a job to read and write” as opposed to manual ones. I had the honour of meeting Ken in person at an event at St. John’s College in Cambridge, where his movie “Sorry We Missed You” (2019), together with de Sica’s classic “Bicycle Thieves” (1948), were screened and debated.
The Birth of Two Books
At this point in my life, I tend to be practical and focused. That’s why I was determined to publish my master’s dissertation in Brazil and in the UK, even though many might have preferred a more “academically robust” published manuscript after a PhD. I simply wanted my ideas to be out there, to be part of the conversation.
Additionally, I want to help build a bridge between academic and non-academic audiences. Inspired by Terence’s quote “I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me” — and ‘man’ read as any gender. My ultimate goal with my research is to bring about relatability —and through that humanity. That is why I extensively use my participants’ in vivo quotations within my work. I really hope people can relate to the life stories of the mothers and daughters on which my work is based, and I am convinced that, at different levels, we all shall be able to do so.
Two books were born from my master’s dissertation, a Brazilian and a British edition. I did the hand drawing of the cover myself, showing a mother holding hands with her daughter while waiting for public transport (a bus), a daily life situation in Brazil.
You can find a few copies of the Brazilian edition of my book available at Cambridge libraries and a free electronic version is also available online
You can also find the English hardcopy available in some Cambridge libraries, as well as an electronic copy on iDiscover
Social Media?
I find it absurd that most of the mothers who participated in my study wouldn’t be able to read my dissertation or the book based on their own life stories. It’s equally absurd that ideas often remain confined within academia, isolated from the broader world, especially in the social sciences. To overcome this, I’ve embraced social media — although I still have mixed feelings about it — as a means to engage with others. I am actively working to share my research content in various ways, including through videos that feature people’s life stories, primarily those of women who are first-generation university students in both Brazil and the UK. This approach allows me to reconnect with the human side of academia, breaking away from the often soulless academic texts.
You can follow my journey on the internet:
Now… my PhD!
I often find myself struggling with word count limits because, as my child’s Reception teacher once described them, “they have a lot to say”. Despite the length, there’s more I’d like to share about my current work as a PhD student at the Faculty of Education.
In my mid-forties, what initially began as a timid exploration of “another country”—using the metaphor previously employed by playwright Julian Mitchell—jumping into the world of the British education elite at Cambridge, I began my own journey in higher education again.
Along the way, I was empowered by my MPhil and PhD supervisors, a few fellow scholars, and my college, Murray Edwards —yes, we still need women’s-only colleges to empower women, at least whilst gender gaps persist in higher education.
I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the PhD scholarship I was fortunate to receive from the Cambridge Trust, The Vice-Chancellor & Murray Edwards scholarship. This financial support has been instrumental in providing me with “a room of my own” to write and publish my work. Moreover, returning to university has been a journey of reconnecting with myself and the world after leaving my corporate career to devote myself to full-time motherhood.
In my ongoing PhD research, I continue to explore the dynamics between mothers and daughters, with a specific focus on the intergenerational dynamics shaped by inequality of access. This time, I am expanding my study to include mothers and daughters from the UK, combining their experiences with those from Brazil.
Different contexts in Brazil and the UK have recently resulted in similar scenarios where access to higher education was broadened in the 21st century, particularly within public, elite universities, increasing the student intake of a diverse range of under-represented groups, notably state-school and BAME students, many of whom are women first-generation university students. My goal in my PhD is to learn about these women’s sense of belonging at elite universities during their undergrads in Brazil and in England in their often first experience outside the family’s home, and gather how well they were received by their alma mater — which translates to “nourishing mother”, a curious one, considering this is a study about mothers and daughters.
My research aims to shed light on how these individuals navigate elite spaces that historically excluded people like them. I want to illustrate that, despite significant progress in widening access and promoting diversity and inclusion, “belonging” represents the next crucial step, advocating that a degree in an elite university should not be achieved at the expense of one’s mental health and wellbeing.
After passing my registration viva in June 2023, I have already completed my data collection in Brazil, where I conducted interviews with mothers and daughters once again, this time for my PhD. I am currently recruiting and interviewing mothers and daughters within the UK and working on the transcription and data analysis of my interviews.
To conclude this lengthy piece of writing from someone who has a lot to say, I will share a picture of my exhausted but happy face after passing my first-year viva.
The end.
FYI: for your information 