Over the last three decades, the impact of dramatic change in the social,
religious, political and economic environment has led to a rapid expansion in
the number of women entering the paid labour force in Sri Lanka as
elsewhere. However, their identities and workload continue to be defined
around caring work, especially for children. Not surprisingly, employed
mothers endeavour to balance these two central spheres of their life, family
and work. This research focuses on the contradictions of mothers¿ work-life
balance. It does so through an analysis of how successfully (or
unsuccessfully) professional and managerial mothers in Sri Lanka combine
motherhood with paid work, and how they understand this in terms of
gendered identities and social norms. This example also allows an evaluation
of western derived theories about mothers¿ decision making in the context of
a developing, Asian country. Grounded theory was used to examine mothers¿
narratives about life in the family and at work, drawn from in-depth qualitative
interviews, along with data from some representative secondary sources, in
order to explore these questions. This thesis demonstrates that working
women¿s mothering leads to the formation of a gendered identity which varies
according to different socio-cultural and religious opportunities and
constraints. Using the Bourdieu approach the research suggests how
everyday life operates in terms of habitus, field and capital. However, these
working mothers have low capacity to achieve a work-life balance and this
may lead to complex social problems.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/5389 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Kodagoda, Delapolage T.D. |
| Contributors | Duncan, Simon, Beckett-Wrighton, Clare |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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