Most migration literature shows that skilled professionals have upward social mobility. But all of this literature is mostly about men. Plus, it focuses on individuals who are already on the job market. How immigrant women fare in the labor market and what about women who are still not incorporated into the high wage sector are seldom discussed. This research shows that professional migrant women face downward mobility. With limited job opportunities, as a result of having both visible barriers (legal constraints) and invisible barriers (culture, language, social network, credential and so on), the high-achieving migrant women become more "traditional" in the United States. Their roles as wives, mothers, part-time workers, volunteers take on a bigger aspect of their lives than their professional lives. In Taiwan they were far more active in the sphere of the economy, earning an independent income, but in the U.S. that is reversed. The experiences of these educated migrant women demonstrate that immigration does not uniformly empower migrants nor does it imply upward economic and social mobility. The study hopes to be the basis for further investigations of upper middle class migrant women in other areas in the America, and hopes to be the basis for future development to understand migrants’ downwards mobility in general. / text

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Quality is a multi-dimensional concept and can be viewed from different perspectives (Fiore &Kimle, 1997:5). From the professional women’s (consumer) perspective career wear quality can be measured on both tangible (functional or sensory) and non-tangible (emotional, cognitive and importance of the self and others) levels. From the retailer’s perspective quality is measured mostly based on intrinsic product features (durability), thus relating to one component of career wear quality of professional women. The discrepancy between the two may result in consumer dissatisfaction and impacts negatively on return sales to the retailer. Quality evaluation occurs at two stages during the consumer decision making process. Firstly, quality is evaluated in-store, during the decision-making stage, and secondly during product use. The quality indicators that professional women use during these stages may not be the same. In this study an exploration was thus done on the tangible and non-tangible quality indicators that professional women use to evaluate career wear quality both during the purchase decision-making stage and during product use. Each of these was measured according to its importance to the respondents during the decision-making stage and during product use and subsequently compared, since the importance of quality indicators may differ between the two stages. The systems theory approach was used to compile the conceptual framework for this study. The systems perspective acknowledges the sequence, relationship and interdependency of the individual indicators that are used to evaluate clothing products. These indicators are considered as so-called inputs and are transformed in terms of outputs, which are interpreted in terms of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The respondents were full-time employed professional women in the legal, financial, engineering and medical industries, as these women require the suitable qualification and registration with the appropriate professional body. This group has spending power and their third largest household expenditure is clothing products. A snowball technique was used to recruit participants/respondents for both the qualitative phase, during which a focus group was held, and for the quantitative data collection (questionnaire) phase. The qualitative technique (focus group) was used to gain insight into the exact quality indicators and specific terminology the target population uses when evaluating career wear quality during the purchase decision making stage and during product use. The questionnaire was compiled against the theoretical background and the information gained from the focus group. Through the use of t-tests and the Pearson’s correlation coefficient it was found that respondents used similar quality indicators to evaluate career wear quality both during the decision-making stage and during product use. Tangible quality indicators were seen as significantly more important than non-tangible quality indicators to respondents during both stages of quality evaluation. Appropriate and adequate information regarding tangible quality indicators must thus be made available by retailers to professional women at the point of purchase. This may ensure consumer satisfaction during product use and facilitate return sales for the retailer. / Dissertation (MConsumer Science)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Consumer Science / unrestricted

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This thesis examines how Afghan women from the professional social class have negotiated the patriarchy in that country and claimed their agency and public life during different political regimes. Resisting the Western representation of Afghan women as passive victims, it uses the life story method, based on interviews with a wide range of women in public life during the period of US-sponsored democracy and intervention, to analyse the complex factors involved in enabling women to access public life. From a historical sociological viewpoint it examines the shifts in the forms of patriarchy and their sustaining gender regimes from 19th century to the present, and draws on Walby’s six structures of patriarchy in order to understand how those shift affected the ability of women to access public life and employment. Those structures – culture, religion, education, employment, family – are explored through the experiences and life histories of my interviewees. The thesis also pays attention to the involvement of external, foreign actors in the affairs of Afghanistan and the impact of those interventions on the possibility for women’s agency and participation in professional and public life through different political regimes. It thus challenges a simplistic view 9/11 was a water-shed moment for women’s empowerment, and notes that the economic is-sues, an aid-dependent economy and political regimes, security and safety, poverty and psychological trauma, corruption and power struggles among different forces (local and foreign) in many ways undermined women’s prospects in public life. The finding of the research shows that the rights and position of women in Afghanistan have fluctuated over the last 100 years depending on the patriarchal cultural, political and religious ideology and practice of the political regimes, and in no small part due to the influence and interference of external actors in the country.

The transitional process to retirement by today's professional women is an issue of great significance. Beginning in the 1960s, these women became the first generation en masse to form long-term careers and to join the professional ranks. Retirement is now affecting over seven million women who are age 55 or older. A void exists in literature concerning these women's experiences as they approach retirement. Their pre-retirement transitions and decision-making process have not been previously addressed. This study addressed the void and through qualitative research, employed a multiple-case study with a phenomenological frame. Through in-depth interviews, the data collected addressed professional women's pre-retirement decision-making. A five-phase working model was developed that illustrates the transitions to retirement of professional women. / Ph. D.

ABSTRACT POST-DIVORCE EXPERIENCE OF HIGHLY EDUCATED AND PROFESSIONAL WOMEN Kavas, Serap Ph.D., Department of Sociology Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Ayse Gunduz Hosgor July 2010, 327 pages Based on life-story interviews with women this dissertation analyzes post divorce experience of highly-educated and professional women. Economic, social, psychological well-being of divorced women / specifically, how they manage to adapt to their new lives after legal dissolution were examined. As is shown in our research while divorce caused various difficulties including financial, social and parenting problems, it, on ther other hand provided relief, for the participants. The participants developed wide range of survival strategies in the face of difficulties and challenges they experience which attested to their agency during and after the divorce process. To the study, while an urbanite, educated and professional woman&rsquo / s termination of a failing relationship itself can be considered as liberation on her part, it will be an overstatement to say that women are enjoying their independence and start anew, just as men do. In this connection, this study searched for insights into the question: How does act of divorce affect these women with respect to their empowerment? Feminist theory is used over the duration of this study. The study scrutinized on the emergent themes such as societal attitudes, single parenting, remarriage, intergenerational and intra-family transmission of divorce, financial consequence, and women&rsquo / s varying coping strategies as well as many other common themes emerged. Studying post-divorce experience of women, which is an unexplored area in Turkish context, employing qualitative method and dwelling on grounded theory approach as an inductive way of data analysis, this study intends to be a considerable contribution to the literature.

This thesis examines how the relationships between women, inside and outside the international women's organization for professionally working women – Soroptimist International – is informed by proximity and distance, which orientates the organization in the direction of a multiculturalism informed by imperial feminism. Focus lies on the organizations use of terms such as “sister” and “professional woman”, and the imagined benefits and responsibilities of being a soroptimist. The thesis is centered on interviews with members from Soroptimist International Sweden, which is seen as a microlevel of the international organization. By interviewing members and comparing the statements with some of the official documents produced by the organization, I also examine the relation between policy and practice. Drawing on the affect theories of Sara Ahmed regarding emotions and bodily orientation; postcolonial perspectives on transnational feminism, sisterhood and solidarity; and anthropological perspectives on transnational women's network, I argue that the orientation of Soroptimist International is informed by white middle-class heterosexual women. When working for women's rights as human rights it is furthermore based on a UN discourse, which also orientate the organization in a universally western way. Furthermore, I also show how the network of Soroptimist International is end oriented, which means that its information and knowledge exchange is centered around its members and the expansion of the network, instead of advocacy making on behalf of women that are non-members. This leads to the conclusion that if Soroptimist International wishes to reorient away from its feminist imperialist and multiculturalist elements, it needs to engage with a praxis-oriented solidarity concept. This means obtaining a multifaceted communication between its local and global levels, as well as seizing the many different partial perspectives existing inside as well as outside the organization.

Literature on marriage shows that in the span of a single generation it has become the norm for both spouses to work outside the home. The inception of dual career marriages in the 1970s has created challenges and complications in the marital system as women break traditional gender roles in families and lead the way toward equality at home, just as they do in the industrial world. Black South African communities are no exception to this trend. The theoretical framework of social constructionism was used to identify the ways in which the participants construct their identities as Black professional women in dual career marriages. In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 Black professional women in dual career marriages to identify the discourses that construct their marriages, their autonomy in marriage and how their construction of autonomy influences their construction of marital satisfaction. The study found that cultural and Christian discourses inform the ways in which the participants construct marriage, autonomy and marital satisfaction. Although the participants construct themselves as empowered and autonomous individuals, particularly in the workplace, they construct themselves as less autonomous within their marriages despite their expressed need to be seen as equal partners. As a result of their dual identities the participants consciously adopt different behaviours in different contexts and in this way reproduce dominant constructions of women. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Psychology / unrestricted

Entre 1945 et 1967, le Canada accueille une des plus importantes vagues d’immigration de son histoire : presque trois millions d'immigrants. À la même époque,la vie des femmes est souvent représentée comme immuable, jusqu'à leur éveil soudain à la fin des années1960. Il est pourtant difficile de croire qu'elles n'accordent aucune attention à l’arrivée de milliers d'immigrants chaque année. Leur vécu entre 1945 et 1967 est beaucoup plus complexe et nuancé que les représentations de leur apolitisme et de leurs préoccupations maternelles ne le laissent supposer.Cette thèse étudie le rôle de femmes – immigrantes,politiques, salariées, femmes au foyer, membres d'associations et de groupes minoritaires – dans l'évolution des politiques d'immigration entre 1945 et1967. Ces politiques offrent la possibilité de vérifier si,lorsqu'il s'agit d'un domaine considéré comme moins directement lié aux intérêts proprement dits des femmes, celles-ci s'y intéressent, trouvent des espaces pour en débattre, essaient de transmettre leurs avis aux décisionnaires et sont écoutées. Un engagement lié aux politiques d'immigration suggère un effort de la part des femmes pour sortir de la sphère privée, sphère assignée comme leur place principale et appropriée.Analyser le niveau d'implication des femmes dans les politiques d'immigration interroge les représentations et les assignations des femmes de l'époque ainsi que les tendances culturelles, les relations sociales et les jeux de pouvoir qui les produisent. Il permet d'autre part d’exposer les barrières érigées contre l'implication des femmes dans l'espace public politique et les discours qui les dirigent vers le foyer. / Between 1945 and 1967, Canada received one of the largest waves of immigrants in its history: nearly three million people. In contrast to this intense activity, the lives of women during that same period are often represented as being immutable – until their awakening in the late 1960s. It is difficult to imagine, however, that they paid little attention to the arrival of thousands of immigrants each year. In reality, the lived experience of women between 1945 and 1967 is much more complexand nuanced than the representations of their apoliticism and maternal essentialism suggest. This thesis studies the role of women - immigrants,politicians, professionals, housewives, members o fassociations and minority groups - in shaping immigration policy between 1945 and 1967. Examining a domain considered as being somewhat outside of' women's interests' offers the possibility of determining the true range of their interests, the spaces available to women for discussing and debating different issues and their means of conveying their views to decisionmakers.An engagement with immigration policy wouldsuggest an effort on their part to go beyond what isconsidered to be women's appropriate sphere.Analyzing the level of their involvement in immigration policy provides a method for interrogating the representations and socially assigned roles of women of the period as well as the social relations, power hierarchies and cultural tendencies that produce them.This analysis also promises to expose the barriers to women's involvement in the political public sphere and to deconstruct the discourses that circumscribe their actions.