In this article we are concerned with how young women's subjectivities are constructed within relations of power, particularly in the context of schooling and the transition to adulthood. We focus on the possibilities and limitations for agency to be exercised by women in the education system and more generally, the resources that they can draw on, and how citizenship is implicated in this process. The process is fraught with emotion, the desire for educational achievement and for agency, ambivalence about appropriate femininity, contradictions in the route from dependence to independence. We draw on empirical research comparing young women's experiences in Finland and the UK, placing those experiences in the broader social, cultural and political context. (Contains 1 note.)