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The “social contract” becomes part of the lived experience of little boys when they discover that the school forbids the warrior narratives through which they initially define masculinity and imposes a different, public sphere; masculinity of rationality and responsibility. They learn that these narratives are not to be lived but only experienced symbolically through fantasy and sport in the private sphere of desire. Little girls, whose gender-defining fantasies are not repressed by the school, have less lived awareness of the social contract.

In 1868, a clergymen told the annual congress of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science that “he had long lived in the town of Liverpool, and had been placed in circumstances there which made him frequently regret that there were no places in which women could find employment. The great want was of employment for every class of women, not only for the higher class, but for those placed in humbler circumstances.” At earlier conferences, however, a number of speakers described the abundant opportunities for female employment in other Lancashire towns. Census figures make it clear that the reason lay in the different industrial bases of these towns.