Inequalities and privileges : middle-class mothers and employment
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis explores the inequalities and privileges women experience by combining\nmotherhood with paid employment. Examining the experiences of thirty ‘working mothers’ through an intersectional1 lens, this thesis reveals complex patterns of inequality and privilege, which arise at the intersection of motherhood with paid work because in contemporary Ireland the normative construction of an ideal worker is one\nwithout care responsibilities, and an ideal mother works full time in the home.\nApplying a feminist, intersectional research methodology, a case study was conducted\nwith thirty women in a middle class Irish suburb. During focus group discussions and\ninterviews, women reveal they experience different relations of privilege and penalty,\nbecause the social relations of gender, motherhood and class intersect with the\ninstitutional domains of family, workplace and society and at these intersections, women\nexperience privileges or inequalities which vary according to each woman’s individual\ncircumstances.\nThrough the concepts of choice, care and time, this study reveals the power operating\nthrough the dominant discourses of neo-liberalism, individualism, feminism and\nmotherhood, which encourage women to both devote significant effort to developing\ntheir children, while also to commit themselves to productive paid work. Women\nnavigate the terrain between motherhood and paid work with little social support and\neach woman’s decision to combine motherhood with paid work is configured as her\nindividual ‘choice’, thus the dilemmas which arise are her own responsibility. This\nintersectional approach reveals relationships between discourses which are\ninterdependent and create new complex patterns of inequality for ‘working mothers’. By privileging some women sometimes, enduring inequalities are created for all.
Author: Clare O’Hagan
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W794139132