Education Commons^™

Women With Student Loans: Relational Impacts On Self, Family, And Work, Annie Pocklington

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the relational impact that student loans have on the lives of women across Washington state, with specific attention to their parents, partners, children, and workplaces. This research utilizes Feminist Relational Work as a theoretical framework, which combines feminist theory and Zelizer’s notion of relational work to attend to the gendered dynamic that Zelizer’s relational work does not specifically name. Participants in this study named sexism as a constant in their lives, whether within family dynamics growing up, throughout the college going process, or in professional post-college spaces that a degree granted them access to. The …