The privilege-precarity paradox: why access to Higher Education is not enough for student mothers

Abstract

International development discourse celebrates increasing women's access to higher education as evidence of gender equality progress. Yet, access metrics obscure a critical reality: women can be simultaneously included and excluded, privileged yet precarious. This commentary draws on qualitative research with student mothers at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to expose how universities practice formal inclusion while maintaining structural exclusion. Using feminist-Foucauldian discourse analysis of focus group discussions, the research reveals how academic institutions maintain what Lynch (2010) calls a “culture of carelessness”, expecting 24/7 availability while devaluing care responsibilities. Student mothers navigate this through two dominant strategies: “compliant strategists” who hide their maternal identities to approximate the ideal scholar, and “soft resisters” who use humour and selective non-compliance to expose impossible standards. Both strategies accept the fundamental incompatibility between motherhood and academic excellence. The “privilege-precarity paradox” emerges as student mothers express gratitude for elite educational access while describing impossible schedules, financial strain, and constant inadequacy, “never enough” for university, motherhood, or partnership. This gratitude narrative prevents recognition of systemic failures, allowing institutions to celebrate diversity metrics while maintaining exclusionary practices. The implications extend beyond individual universities. When development programmes measure women's educational progress through enrolment alone, they miss how institutions systematically marginalise mothers, impoverishing scholarship and perpetuating inequality. The commentary argues that real educational development requires not just access but institutional transformation, such as temporal justice, care infrastructure, and reimagined metrics of excellence that recognise care experience as capability rather than deficit.