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| "If at first our idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" - Albert Einstein |
During the past two days I've been freaking out and calming down and freaking out again. As I read the literature I realize that I don't really know what I'm looking for! I have been reading a few articles and if anything, I'm becoming more confused, which is why I decided to write on my blog, since sometimes it helps me clear my ideas.
So, my topic has to do with female hospitality managers in Chile and in my draft research proposal I came up with a question that I wanted to answer, which I wrote about in my last post but I'll write about it again... My question is:
Do women want to give up their career goals for their families or do the have to?
Of course, to answer that question I would have to know whether women give up their career goals at all. I know a few managers who have but I don't know that that is common in Chile since there are no studies to support it.
This is why I'm having so much trouble! My question is too specific and it has no basis. From the reading that I've done, I've come up with two alternatives that could lead me to study the same phenomenon.
One is the concept of the "glass ceiling". There was a study done by Owen et al. in the early 2000s - (there is no date on the article, strangely) that talks about women being underrepresented in upper level managerial positions. I know that other studies in general support that. I have not read them yet, but if this is the angle that I take, of course I will. Anyway, the concept of the glass ceiling, however, relates to women not being considered for higher positions, while here I am investigating whether perhaps they are not even getting to that point because of family issues. But maybe that is putting too much of my opinion into it. Maybe my broader topic should be like this:
Glass ceiling: are women not being considered for executive positions or are they quitting before they ever could?
Again, that presupposes that they are quitting... maybe they are not... I will be interviewing managers, so I guess they have not quit, so it would be silly to ask whether they are considering it...
Or maybe the question is more: would you consider higher positions? But then how do you ask that without making it sound like they have to choose between their family and their work life... I do want to know if they are choosing, but they are not just going to tell me that.
I've read a book - a chapter - called Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research. The author of the chapter, Tina Miller, is conducting a study on pregnant women before and after they have their babies to find out what they feel about motherhood. Her issue is that she wants to know more than what she calls "public" aspect of it, meaning that the women would discuss what society knows and accepts regarding pregnancy and motherhood. She knows that by interviewing women she can get them to talk about the "private" aspect, that Miller describes as safe still because it is relaxed but not too personal. What Miller is really interested in, however, is getting some more "personal" information, which is when people say what they really feel even if that is not what it is publicly accepted.
Miller was doing this for her PhD and it was on-going research that required two or three interviews with the same women before and after they had the baby. Clearly, there is no way I can get that level of depth. First because I don't have the time, and second because I am not really a researcher. I have no experience doing this and the amount of time that I have to do it - the interviews in particular - is extremely limited.
For all these reasons, I can't just go up to someone I don't know, have a half-hour interview and expect them to tell me about whether they chose family over work or the other way around. I don't think is that simple.
(...)
Ok, I've talked about it with my boyfriend and I have an article that I had just started reading when I freaked out and felt the compelling need to write. Turns out, this article may be exactly what I want to do. It's written by Reimara Valk and Vasanthi Srinivasan (2011) and it's called: Work-family Balance of Indian Women Software professionals: A Qualitative Study. It is very similar to what I want to do with women in hospitality and in Chile. It just has a slightly different question.
Their question is: How do work and family related factors influence the work-family balance of Indian women IT professionals?
My question is: How do work and family related factors influence the women's career in the hospitality industry in Chile?
Under that she talked about:
Women professionals and the work-family balance: literature review
Nature of the software services - which of course I would talk about hospitality services - and its impact on work-life balance
Methodology - they also did interviews
Findings - I would have to discuss them according to what I find in my data
Discussion and conclusion
I think this will probably be the best option. Ok, now back to work because I have to continue doing a lot of reading.
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