Swinging regions: Young women and club culture in 1960s Manchester

Abstract

This article examines the opportunities for women to access a ‘Swinging Sixties’ life-style in a northern English city. The article is based upon interviews with women who actively participated in Manchester’s coffee club and discotheque scene in the mid-1960s. I explore the gendered dynamics of the cultural north/south divide and the ways in which girls in the regions carved out access to the style and experience of the ‘Swinging City’, dispelling the popular myth of this being exclusively attached to London. The interview data reveals high levels of creativity and agency and I examine the ways in which encounters with popular culture, notably night clubs, pop music and fashion, impacted on the women’s wider life choices and experiences. I also reflect on cinematic representations of young women in England in this period and the spatially motivated discourses pertinent to the case study.