dc.contributor.author | Bendiksby, Ragnhild | en |
dc.date.accessioned | 2016-12-19T14:15:14Z | |
dc.date.available | 2016-12-19T14:15:14Z | |
dc.date.issued | 1988 | |
dc.date.submitted | 1987 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/19263 | |
dc.description.abstract | Thirtyeight medical doctors and social workers aged between 28 and 38
were interviewed once by in-depth, semi-structured interview about how
they perceived their roles as doctors and social workers on the one
hand, and their family and domestic commitments on the other. Doctors
and social workers were chosen as two professions which both involve
caring work. At the time when the fieldwork was carried out, social
work had a majority of women working in it, whilst medicine was male
dominated in the sense that the majority of practitioners were men.
Half the respondents had given birth to and were rearing their own
children; half were childfree at the time of interview. A modified
version of grounded theory was used in the analysis. Throughout the
thesis the women's own perception of their situation is a major focus
of interest.
Differences were found in how doctors and social workers had perceived
their future with regard to work and domestic commitments while in
tertiary education. These differences are explained in terms of
secondary socialisation and the different environments in which the
two occupational groups had trained. These differences affected the
process of adapting to conventional gender roles.
The thesis explores the pressures on women to conform to conventional
gender roles. Respondents were categorised as conformers or nonconformers,
although any individual may move between categories. There
were two types of non-conformers: the respondents who paid lip-service
to conventional gender roles and the respondents who attempted to develop
alternative life-styles. Socialisation theory is used to explain how the respondents came to
perceive appropriate gender roles. C. Wright Mills's concept of
vocabularies of motives and Garfinkel's ideas of how actors assign out¬
comes their legitimate histories are used to explain how the respondents
presented their conformity, or lack of same, to different audiences.
The need to justify or present their actions to audiences affected
patterns of conformity to a certain extent.
It is argued that degree of conformity to conventional gender roles in
marriage is determined in the early stages of a relationship, and the
concept of the 'marriage contract' is developed to explain how spouses
come to hold concurrent views on appropriate male and female roles in
the marriage and the marital division of labour.
It is argued that there are exceedingly strong pressures on women to
conform to conventional gender roles, especially during the early
reproductive stage. | en |
dc.publisher | The University of Edinburgh | en |
dc.relation.ispartof | Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2016 Block 6 | en |
dc.relation.isreferencedby | Already catalogued | en |
dc.title | Female dilemma: conventional gender roles - or the search for a new way? | en |
dc.type | Thesis or Dissertation | en |
dc.type.qualificationlevel | Doctoral | en |
dc.type.qualificationname | PhD Doctor of Philosophy | en |