Assignment 1 – Research Article Summary
Patrice M. Buzzanelli; Rebecca Meisenbach; Robyn Remke; Meina Liu; Venessa Bowers; Cindy Conn. The good working mother: managerial women’s sense making and feelings about work. Family Issues, Sept 2005 v56 i3 p261 (25)
The researchers in this study did not use any particular theoretical perspective. They were interested in
determining the discourse and practice of female employees in positions of management and other professional
roles to determine how they made sense of their work and family choices. The focus was on this group to
determine how these women made their way through the challenges of every day life and work synonymously.
These women engaged in child care searches and relational negotiations taking into consideration their professional
and feminine roles, their work opportunities and careers all awhile becoming mothers and handling work-family
issues.
Researchers choose 11 participants, which were managerial women, out of a database of 102 pre and post-
maternity leave experience-focused interviews that were conducted on women of different occupations. A series of
The Homework on Should Women Work Outside Home
Recently, many women are engaged in various kinds of job, and they have been advancing in society. Moreover, it is quite ubiquitous among typical families that a mother works outside the home. In the article Should a Woman Work Outside the Home?, the author Mohammed Akade Osman Sudan argues that a womans rightful place in society is in the home. I disagree with the authors view that women should ...
interview questions were developed to determine the reasons women returned to work, what kind of child care
arrangements were made and when, and how these women felt about returning to work and in the first few
weeks of being back at work. A series of audio taped interviews were also conducted on women the interviewers
knew who had taken maternity leave.
Interviewers transcribed the surveys and audiotapes onto 120 pages of data and a thematic analysis
was conducted. Researchers determined that the participants developed their good mother image into a good
working mother role that fit their lifestyles and interests. There were three thematic processes that were
determined from the analysis that supported this; good working mothers arranged quality child care, are equal
partners and feel pleasure in their working role. In conclusion to the research, sense making enabled women to
establish order onto ongoing events to create a home life that was satisfying to them.
