Everyday Roles and Women’s Attitude about the Self over Time across Work, Family and Community

Author(s):

Kankana Mukhopadhyay(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

WERA Focal Meeting

Format:

Paper

Session Information

WERA SES 04 C, Integrating Marginalised Education Spaces into Mainstream Global Discourses

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

09:00-10:30

Room:

305. [Main]

Chair:

Joanna Madalinska-Michalak

Contribution

Statement of the problem/objective

Women’s voluntary participation outside their households like in community development projects led to dramatic improvements in various social spheres, like health and education and brought social change in many developed and developing societies (Al-Ali, 1997; Escobar, 1995; Rosander, 1997). However, voluntary participation presents challenges because it is not a mutually exclusive activity for women from their other daily activities. Women are entangled in complex knots of everyday roles both inside (wives, mothers, etc.) and outside (labor market participant, voluntary worker, etc.) their households.

Greater involvement of women holds the promise of much more effective and equitable processes of development. But it also means changes in women’s lives and identities (Chatty & Rabo, 1997), resulting into their change in behaviours and attitudes (Mustillo, Wilson & Lynch, 2004; Ostrom, 1990; Shah, 1998). But an insufficient understanding of such changes, and a mere superficial knowledge of women’s lives guides most policy making in the community development project sphere, ignoring the complexity and the constant evolving nature of their lives (Chavis & Florin, 1990; Green, 1998; Mansuri & Rao, 2004; Conning & Kevane, 2002).

Thus, the primary question that guides this research is what is the relationship between playing different roles – labour market participant, family involvement, community involvement and participation – and the attitude about the self among women over time?

This study uses data from an existing survey that provides myriad of information on different aspects of the everyday life of women to describe and understand the complex relationships between attitudinal aspects and different factors of everyday-role-playing. Innovative use of existing data to provide solutions to social problems connects directly to the overall theme of the conference, “The Power of Education Research for Innovation in Practice and Policy”. The findings also address the issue of educating policy framers of community development projects on what it means for women, playing multiple roles every day, participate inside and outside their households and how can they be better prepared to do so.

Theoretical Frameworks

This research study is guided by two interrelated theoretical frameworks – role theory in sociology, and the theory of identity construction through role-playing.

Role theorists define a role as an expected pattern or set of behaviours that exists in the minds of people (Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991) and performed to fulfil personal and social expectations (Heiss, 1981). Focusing mainly on how the enactment of one role interacts with the other roles, they emphasize that the involvement of persons in multiple roles can be complex and stress-provoking (Katz & Kahn, 1978), since multiple roles can have conflicting demands. Both individual and social factors determine how one combines roles (Turner, 1978). In theories of identity construction through role playing, roles are defined as complex web of interconnections that integrate self, others and culture (Gergen, 1991). In social contexts, the self-defined ‘I’, and the poignant connectedness and interdependence with others, interact to form identity (Rolland, 1988). In case of women playing different roles, the process develops into women’s different negotiable identities that have certain core values and beliefs as their fundamental nature. As a result, identity construction involves a process of negotiation of social roles and expectations with personal beliefs (Golden, 2001; McCall & Simmons, 1978; Weigert, Teitge & Teitge, 1986).

Reaping the benefits of the common claims of the two theories that there is a connection between role-playing and social construction of identity, a conceptual framework is built to guide the study in exploring whether playing different roles in the labour market, family and community everyday lead a woman’s attitude about the self in a certain way.

Method

Method This study adopts a post-positivist philosophical paradigm using a causal-correlational research design (Creswell, 2003) to measure the strength of the relationship between the factors evolving through role playing every day in labor market, family and community, and the change of positive attitude about self of women over time. Data Sources Data for this study come from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women (NLSYW) cohort, collected by the Bureau of Labour Statistic, United States Department of Labour. I filtered 39 variables from the wide variety of topics covered in the survey across three years – 1991, 1993 and 2003. The study sample size is 3,612 women, whose average age in 1991 was 42 years. Measures and Analytical Procedure Factor analysis procedures were used on the attitude variables to obtain the dependent variable – positive attitude about the self – which was assessed at 1993 and 2003. The predictors were from (1) labor market participation (annual total family income in 1991), (2) family involvement (size of household in 1991), and (3) community involvement and participation (caring for others outside the household in 1991 and volunteering in 1991). Further, another factor obtained from the factor analysis – perceived social approvability – has been used as a control variable in the analyses. I used two multiple regression analyses to predict 1) 1993 levels of positive attitudes and 2) residual changes in positive attitudes from 1993 to 2003. Y = β0 + β1(1993 perceived social approval) + β2(1991annual total family income) + β3(1991 size of household) + β4(1991 volunteering) + β5(1991 caring for others outside the household) + ε where Y is level of self-reported positive attitude about the self.

Expected Outcomes

Results and Conclusions The multiple regression analysis predicting the 1993 levels of positive attitude about the self of women accounted for 15% of the variance in those 1993 assessments. Larger household sizes predicted slightly lower, while women with higher socio-economic status tended to feel slightly more positive attitudes about the self. Volunteering predicted slightly higher, but, women who cared for others outside the household reported lower levels of positive attitude about self. The second model, accounting for 7.4% of the variance, captured the residual change in positive attitude about the self of women from 1993 to 2003. On average, women’s positive attitudes about themselves increased in 10 years. Higher levels of income predicted slight residual increases and women who cared for others outside the household demonstrated slightly weaker increases in positive attitudes. Women who reported volunteering in 1991 had slightly stronger increases in positive attitudes about themselves from 1993 to 2003. The relationship between positive attitudes about the self and income indicates positive connections at all levels. However, when the focus is changed to positive attitudes about the self and non-economic parameters like volunteering and caring for others outside the household, the picture is rather interesting. Though volunteering increased initial levels of positive attitudes and its positive effects spanned across ten years, caring for others outside the household had a detrimental effect, suggesting an adverse cost to such activities over time. Examining the results with the theories of role-playing and identity construction shows that women playing different roles every day negotiate between activities that they choose to do of their own volition and are intrinsically rewarding, and activities that they are obliged to perform, therefore being more burdensome. This is a significant understanding that could greatly extend the scope of policy framing and project designing in the area of community development.

References

References Chavis, D. & Florin, P. (1990). Community development, community participation. Prevention Office, Bureau of Drug Abuse Services, San Jose, CA. Conning, J. & Kevane, M. (2002). Community based targeting mechanisms for social safety nets: A critical review. World Development, 30(3), p. 375-94. Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self. New York: Basic Books. Golden, A. (2001). Modernity and the communicative management of multiple roles: The case of the worker-parent. The Journal of Family Communications, 4, p. 233-264. Green, R. H. (1998). Problematics and pointers about participatory research and gender. In Guijit, I. & Shah, M. K. (eds). The myth of community: Gender issues in participatory development, p. 71-77. Colchester, UK: Intermediate Technology Development Group Pub. Heiss, J. (1981). Social roles. In M. Rosenberg & R. Turner (eds.), Social psychology: Sociological perspectives (p. 94-129). New York: Basic Books. McCall, G. & Simmons, J. (1978). Identities and interactions. New York: Free Press. Mansuri, G. & Rao, V. (2004). Community-based and –driven development: A critical review. The World Bank Research Observer, 19(1), p. 1-39. Mustillo, S., Wilson, J. & Lynch, S. M. (2004). Legacy volunteering: A test of two theories of intergenerational transmission. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66(2), p. 530-541. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Senegal and Morocco. In D. Chatty & A. Rabo (eds.) Organizing women: Formal and informal women’s groups n the Middle. East, p. 101-123. New York, NY: Berg Shah, M. K. (1998). Gendered perceptions of well-being and social change in Darko, Ghana. In Guijit, I. & Shah, M. K. (eds). The myth of community: Gender issues in participatory development. p. 141-151. Colchester, UK: Intermediate Technology Development Group Pub. Turner, R. H. (1978). The role and the person. The American Journal of Sociology, 84, p. 1-23. Weigert, A., Teitge, J. & Teitge, D. (1986). Society and identity: Towards a sociological psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Author Information

Kankana Mukhopadhyay (presenting / submitting)

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.