Balancing caring and paid work in the UK: narrating ‘choices’ as first-time parents

Paid work is generally accepted as an important dimension of hegemonic masculinities and men's identities, which can become heightened when they become fathers. Changes in global economies together with educational shifts and other demographic patterns mean that paid work has become a significant feature of many women's lives too. Increasingly across Europe women who are mothers combine caring, domestic chores, and paid work. Using data from a qualitative longitudinal study on women's experiences of transition to first-time motherhood in the UK, this paper will explore how women narrate and reconcile their decisions either to return to paid work or not to, following the birth of their first child (Miller 2005). These findings are considered alongside a companion study on men's experiences of transition to first-time fatherhood (Miller 2011). The comparison shows that women articulate work and caring decisions in narratives which convey a sense of ‘guilt’, whilst the men are able to talk more freely – and acceptably – about ‘career progression’ and the importance of work to their identity and their new family. Even though recent research points to some changes in men's involvement in caring and women's increased activities in the work-place, particular aspects of these arrangements remain seemingly impervious to change.     

A Feminist Approach to Exploring the Intersections of Individuals,Families, and Communities

Abstract

It is important for social workers to use contextual understandings to guide their work with client systems, particularly those whose life experiences fall under the umbrella of diversity. Thus, integrating women's perspectives/voices directly into the study of their lives is one way to more accurately understand lesbians, whose experiences as women, as partners, and as mothers may be misinterpreted without their own perspectives to guide understanding. This paper presents a model for research that utilizes an eco-systemic perspective, including eco maps and genograms, to collect and organize data. This model is a natural extension of social work interview and assessment techniques, and can illuminate respondents' diverse experiences as well as the socio-cultural environments in which these experiences are embedded.     

Striving to be ‘good’ mothers: abused women's experiences of mothering

So far, limited work has focused on women's experiences of mothering in the context of domestic violence. This article presents the findings of a study that investigated women's experiences of mothering in the context of domestic violence and, while it accounts for the difficulties and challenges these women face, it emphasises their desire to be ‘good’ mothers and the strategies they develop in order to achieve ‘good’ mothering. The findings demonstrate that abused women typically strive to be ‘good’ mothers, which requires them to put their children first and to protect and care for them. The recognition of these strategies provides ground to question current professional practices and to develop interventions that will best support women and children living with domestic violence. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Migration as a window to empowerment: Nepalese women's experiences in South Korea

ABSTRACT

Migrant women are often described as victims of the global economy: accounts of human rights abuses and economic exploitation have eclipsed more positive accounts of the impact of migrant work on women's lives. Some migrant women are positioned to make use of new opportunities which they see as empowering, in contrast to earlier experiences in their homes or sending countries. This study, based on qualitative interviews with 13 young Nepalese women working in manufacturing and agricultural sectors with Employment Permits in South Korea, highlights a rather positive window of women's empowerment. It shares the perspectives of young, mostly single women who gain self-confidence through their new ability to take care of their family (some becoming primary breadwinners). The women are also able to plan for their economic futures, and report their voices being heard more in important family decision-making. These material, relational, and perceptual improvements are all important dimensions of empowerment. In these experiences, gender intersects with age and other factors to produce a nuanced view of specific young women's experience of migrant work.     

The significance of fathers for inner-city African-American teen mothers

Using the accounts of family life in young women's life stories, this qualitative study examined experiences with biological fathers for a sample of inner-city African-American teen mothers and a comparable sample of young women who were not parents. Distinguishing findings emerged about the pattern of young women's residential history with fathers, activity and interactions with fathers, and feelings about fathers. These qualitative findings were discussed in terms of their implications for services, policy, and research.     

Opting Back In: The Influence of Time at Home on Professional Women's Career Redirection after Opting Out

Limited research on professional women's labour force re‐entry after a career break (so‐called ‘opting out’) finds that women redirect away from former careers. Little is known about why this occurs. Our study, based on in‐depth interviews with 54 at‐home mothers, extends prior research to address this question. We find that among women who intended to return to work (who constitute the majority), most planned to pursue alternative careers, typically in traditionally female‐dominated professions or were uncertain about their career direction; few planned to return to their former employers. The reasons for this redirection were women's negative experiences in family inflexible occupations, skill depreciation and perceived age discrimination. Equally or more important, however, was their adaptation to new constraints and opportunities at home (such as increased involvement in mothering and community work), which engendered an aspirational shift towards new, care‐oriented professions that were lower paid and had lower status. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.     

Making Milk and Money: Contemporary Mothers' Orientations to Breastfeeding and Work

In most Western industrial nations, gains have been made in women's educational and occupational opportunities as part of a larger gender revolution. At the same time, contemporary mothering expectations have expanded and intensified, especially the renewed focus on breastfeeding as the “optimal” choice for infant feeding. How do women perceive the simultaneous pursuit of these activities? Prior scholarship has identified tensions in cultural models of breastfeeding as well as in women's subjective experiences, emphasizing how breastfeeding is shaped and encountered through sociocultural context, especially ideologies that position work and mothering as incompatible. Building on this, I examine how the current generation of working mothers view working and breastfeeding. Through in‐depth interviews with 32 U.S. women, I show how women espouse distinctly different orientations to breastfeeding: instrumentalist, quasi‐maternalist, and pragmatist. I argue that these different orientations both reflect and reframe existing cultural models and discourses about contemporary women's relationships to work, mothering, and breastfeeding.     

Negotiating Gender in Uncertainty: A Mechanism of Women's Marginalization in the Japanese Workplace*

Abstract Women have been long absent from important white-collar positions in large Japanese organizations. Two approaches have been made to understand women's work experiences and career outcomes in these organizations, namely, the structuralist and the rational choice approaches. The underlying assumption of both approaches is that individual women's career orientations are basically fixed and larger factors outside the workplace play central roles to determine women's career outcomes. In order to understand women's work experiences and perspectives more realistically, however, we need to turn our attention to the workplace itself and to examine the mechanisms through which women are constantly marginalized, if inadvertently, in everyday interactions with others. Drawing on a developing perspective that focuses on the dynamic nature of women's career experiences. this paper, based on a case study, demonstrates a major way in which the influences of outside factors, specifically of women's attitude toward work, are in fact reinforced within the workplace. A major component of this mechanism is women's sense of uncertainty generated through their day-to-day work lives.     

Asking for a Child: The Refashioning of Reproductive Space in Post-War Northern Vietnam

In the mid-1980s, population movement, wartime male mortality, and changing notions of marriageability converged to create a radically different marital terrain than that previously encountered by Vietnamese women. Finding themselves without suitable marriage prospects a small number of single women asked men they would not marry to get them pregnant. This paper focuses on three elements that contributed to this refashioning of reproductive space: the women's post-war experiences that prompted them to ‘ask for a child’, state policies that provided a different dynamic for bearing children out of wedlock, and the manner in which the Women's Union sought to provide social acceptance for women who ‘asked for a child’. As a result of the women's agency and the state's decision to incorporate single mothers into society a new reproductive space was forged in which ideologies of motherhood, family, and reproduction took on new meaning in post-war northern Vietnam.     

Gender attitudes,sexual violence,and HIV/AIDS risks among men and women in Cape Town,South Africa

This study examined gender attitudes and sexual violence‐supportive beliefs (rape myths) in a sample of South African men and women at risk for HIV transmission. Over 40% of women and 16% of men had been sexually assaulted, and more than one in five men openly admitted to having perpetrated sexual assault. Traditional attitudes toward women's social and gender roles, as well as rape myths, were endorsed by a significant minority of both men and women. Multivariate analyses showed that for men, sexual assault history and rape myth acceptance, along with alcohol and other drug use history, were significantly related to cumulative risks for HIV infection. In contrast, although we found that women were at substantial risk for sexually transmitted infection (STI), including HIV, women's risks were only related to lower levels of education and alcohol use history. We speculate that women's risks for STI/HIV are the product of partner characteristics and male‐dominated relationships, suggesting the critical importance of intervening with men to reduce women's risks for sexual assault and STI/HIV.     

Sustaining and Developing Women's Trade Union Activism: A Gendered Project?

Against the background of heavy membership decline, the increasing importance of women as a source of members for unions and union efforts to attract women into membership, this paper explores the nature of women's union activism. The focus is on why women stay active in unions. The paper employs Klandermans' model as a framework for examining senior union women's activism. This study suggests that the model is gendered in that women's experiences and perceptions of trade unions are highly gender specific and further that their union activities are underpinned by a feminist paradigm. The women in the study expressed a strong desire to ensure that the union works for women, indicative of the gendered nature of their commitment to the union. They revealed gendered bargaining priorities and thus gendered perceptions of union instrumentality. Their social integration within the union is shown to be highly or partially contingent upon, formal and informal women's support networks.     

A Luta Kontinua (The Struggle Continues)

This article examines how East Timorese women's contributions to the resistance against the twenty-four-year Indonesian occupation (“the Resistance”) have been marginalized within the veteran's valorization scheme (veterans' scheme) established in the post-conflict period. Drawing on interviews with politicians, veterans and members of women's organizations, we show that although women played significant roles within the Armed, Clandestine and Diplomatic fronts, for the most part they have not been recognized as veterans within the veterans' scheme. Instead, the scheme has reinforced perceptions of women's roles as wives, mothers, homemakers and widows, rather than as political actors, suggesting that the return to “peace” in Timor-Leste has been accompanied by the strengthening of patriarchal traditions and the expectation that women return to “traditional” roles. We argue that the failure to recognize women as veterans is problematic both for East Timorese women and society as a whole. It represents a lost opportunity to recognize women's agency and potentially to improve their social status in society. It also narrows the way in which the independence struggle is remembered and represented and further promotes a culture of “militarized masculinity” that elevates and rewards men who show the capacity to use violence.     

Protecting Children

Abstract

In this study, difficulties that women with alcohol problems and victimization experiences might have protecting their children from victimization were investigated. Mothers of children (ages 3-17) were recruited from a longitudinal study of women, alcohol problems, and victimization; women came from alcohol treatment programs, battered women's shelters, mental health clinics, drinking and driving programs, and a random household sample. Hypothetical parenting scenarios were constructed to assess mothers' ability to protect their children from victimization trauma. Women's responses to the scenarios were analyzed thematically and coded. Next, coded responses were analyzed quantitatively to identify significant differences among women with past alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems, current AOD problems, and no AOD problems. Women with current AOD problems were more likely than women with no AOD problems and women with past AOD problems to provide aggressive responses to scenarios. Women with past AOD problems were more likely than their non-addicted counterparts to perceive sexual abuse as a possibility, to attribute responsibility for the problem to the other participant only (seeing no role for their child), and to seek information about what happened from the other participant only. Findings suggest that some interpersonal problem-solving difficulties resolve when women become sober while others persist into recovery, potentially affecting women's ability to protect their children.     

Understanding the Lives of Mothers after Incarceration: Moving Beyond Socially Constructed Definitions of Motherhood

In the wake of mass incarceration, an increasing number of women are going through the penal system. A fair number of these women are mothers, yet the intersection of motherhood and prison may contradict conceptions of femininity and challenge traditional views of appropriate mothering. The contradiction between notions of criminality and femininity contributes to stigmatized perceptions of formerly incarcerated mothers, which drastically shapes their ability to reintegrate into society post‐incarceration. While reentry efforts tackle gender differences through the implementation of gender‐responsive programs that cater to women's needs, failure to adequately account for unique maternal experiences may hinder attempts to address obstacles faced by mothers in particular, such as regaining child custody and paying for day care. This article argues for special attention to the post‐incarceration experiences of mothers without imposing socially constructed definitions of motherhood like having custody and living with children, which may not coincide with the realities mothers face after imprisonment. Ideas are also discussed for the inclusive consideration of formerly incarcerated mothers and their post‐incarceration experiences.     

The Relational Contexts of Migration: Mexican Women in New Destination Sites

This article assesses Mexican immigrant women's experiences of isolation and autonomy in three new destination sites in Montana, Ohio, and New Jersey. We highlight six case studies from our cross‐comparative data set of in‐depth interviews and field work with 98 women to illustrate the intersections between contexts of reception and gender relations in shaping women's settlement experiences. We find that women in sites with a concentrated Mexican population and a well‐developed social service infrastructure are relatively autonomous in accomplishing daily activities independent of their relationships with husbands or partners. In contrast, for women living in sites with few social support services, relationships with the men in their lives, what we call their “relational contexts,” matter for women's experiences of isolation or autonomy outside the home. Relational contexts have not been emphasized in previous literature on gender and migration but may be significant in shaping women's experiences across varying contexts of reception.     

Cultural Sexism is Ordinary: Writing and Re‐Writing Women in Academia

When we ‘write women’ in academia, the focus in much of the literature to date has been to write about women. The focus of this article is the writing of women themselves; to give voice to women's experiences as constructors of knowledge. Through so doing this article uses writing as praxis; as a mechanism to disrupt, challenge and open a space for renegotiation of cultural norms within academic institutions. Based on qualitative data collection over a six‐year period, this article writes women's experiences and unpacks the way in which cultural sexism has become an ordinary feature of women's academic lives. It also considers ways in which the underlying cultural interpretations of hegemonic masculinized structures may be re‐written.     

Aboriginal Women's Perceptions and Experiences of a Family Violence Transitional Accommodation Service

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative study of Aboriginal women's perceptions and experiences of a transitional housing program in South Australia that was established to assist long-term homelessness and family violence. The aim of the study was to explore the experiences and service outcomes for Aboriginal women and their children and to identify both facilitators and barriers to the effective operation of the program. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 13 Aboriginal women and thematic analysis was used to report their collective stories. The women's stories showed individualised, flexible, and open-ended support as well as practical outcomes of stable, safe housing for themselves and their children were particularly valued. The women reported that these features of the program augmented feelings of strengthened confidence and self-efficacy. The authors argue the domestic and family violence sector has the opportunity to learn from the perceptions and experiences of Aboriginal women, particularly allowing time and commitment to working long-term with families.     

Nigerian women seeking asylum in England on grounds of sexual violence

This study aims to give voice to the experiences of Nigerian women seeking asylum in the UK on the grounds of sexual violence. It draws upon in-depth narrative interviews with 10 Nigerian women, aged between 27 and 46, seeking asylum on the grounds of sexual violence. Women's accounts were analysed thematically, and the contextual factors that influenced the outcome of their asylum claims were explored. Findings show that women's asylum applications were affected by factors relating to lack of evidence, use of words and/or phrases that do not align with the English language meaning of sexual violence, Home Office's lack of understanding of cultural issues specific to women and peculiarity of women's narrative construction and the decommissioning of legal assistance. Findings also suggest that asylum organisations play a key role in providing holistic support to women. Recommendations are made for the Home Office's policies following these findings.