Basia McDougall MPhil.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

AbstractA longitudinal study addressed the question: what can women’s stories tell us about theirworking lives? Of specific interest was the importance of maternity leave to career which istreated by academics and organisations alike - as a period of absence. Furthermore, allmaternity leave periods are considered equivalent. Feminist epistemological frameworks,drawing on psychological understanding, were used to choose methods and interpretfindings. Six married women were interviewed during their second or subsequent maternityleave (T1) and re-interviewed approximately three years later (T2). The women representedtypical, middle-class families of two or more children. The women had worked full-timebefore motherhood and full or part-time after their first child, most at a lower status/pay. Thewomen used the management of their first maternity leave to inform their work plans. By T2,one woman opted to take a career break; two returned to part-time work; two were focusingon unpaid community work; one woman had just given birth to her third child. Thetranscribed stories captured in-depth reflections and self-analysis. Biographic narrativeinterpretative method identified thematic coherence across time. Semi-structured interviewsexplored sense-making of working life trajectories. Interpretative phenomenological analysisidentified shared perceptions of a ‘man’s working world’, which ‘good employee’ sensemakingpermitted the women to largely be unaffected by - up until their second child. This‘good employee’ master theme disintegrated, whilst the master theme of ‘a woman in aman’s world’ remained strong, developing into ‘traditional stay-at-home rationalisations’ andperceptions of ‘anti-mother organisations’. The women’s community network together withself-development during the time of their second or subsequent maternity leave led to threeconclusions:a. Second or subsequent maternity leave is qualitatively different from first maternity leave,critical to working-life trajectories. This is an unidentified feature in career theory.b. The women’s understanding of work, job and career, change as a consequence,emphasising the need for a shift in organisational perceptions of maternity leave.c. The interviews resulted in powerful and emotive events supporting future use of this formof narrative collection and analysis.i