Souha R. Ezzedeen, Marie-Hélène Budworth and Susan D. Baker
Emerging adult women are actively engaged in career and family explorations, amidst changing opportunities and constraints. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether…
Abstract
Purpose
Emerging adult women are actively engaged in career and family explorations, amidst changing opportunities and constraints. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether such women felt they could balance a high-achieving career and a family life, or what has become known in the popular discourse as women “having it all.”
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study utilized focus groups to explore subjective perceptions of balancing career and family held by emerging adult women. The sample (n=69) comprised female university students in a large Canadian metropolitan area.
Findings
Thematic analyses unearthed six distinct yet overlapping positions on the possibility of balancing career and family: Optimism (“I can have it all.”), Pessimism (“I cannot have it all.”), Uncertainty (“I am not sure I can have it all.”), Choice (“I don’t want to have it all.”), Pragmatism (“This is what I need to do to have it all.”) and Support (“Will I access the support necessary to have it all?”).
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include the potential of focus groups to elicit group polarization and to lead participants to censor opinions to conform to conversations. Still, the study reveals more nuanced positions held by women than reported earlier.
Originality/value
The study extends prior research by revealing the range of positions held by women toward career and family, highlighting women’s understanding of the complex issues involved and showcasing their awareness of the crucial role of social support.
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My discussion of intersexuality's changing exemplificatory position within feminist studies of science explains how its medical management has emerged as an exemplary injustice of…
Abstract
My discussion of intersexuality's changing exemplificatory position within feminist studies of science explains how its medical management has emerged as an exemplary injustice of recognition. Specifically, the surgical protocol that aims to make unusual genitalia invisible, and the medical obfuscation of intersexuality's ramifications for the cultural construction of gender, have been written as a wrong by Anne Fausto-Sterling and Suzanne Kessler. By mapping intersex treatment as a discursively produced injustice, I argue that it is accordingly within discourse that the wrongs of intersex treatment may be redressed – not by undoing past surgeries, or by punishing clinicians as personally “guilty.”
Draws on excerpts from interviews with six women teacher/leaders in Taranaki, New Zealand to explore arguments that in Western cultures men maintain power and control of the…
Abstract
Draws on excerpts from interviews with six women teacher/leaders in Taranaki, New Zealand to explore arguments that in Western cultures men maintain power and control of the sexual division of labour in the home, which is allied to a sexual division of labour at work. Uncovers some of the links between the women’s home and school experiences in their accounts of their negotiations of what have commonly been seen as contradictory subject positions of leader/wife; mother/career woman. Shows from the women’s stories about their personal lives and aspirations, however, that for reasons that were quite complex, some of them were themselves maintaining gendered divisions of labour. Suggests some implications for further research.
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Stacey Menzel Baker, Susan Schultz Kleine and Heather E. Bowen
This paper explores the symbolic meanings that children of elementary school age attach to souvenirs from different types of vacation destinations. Data from interviews and…
Abstract
This paper explores the symbolic meanings that children of elementary school age attach to souvenirs from different types of vacation destinations. Data from interviews and pictorial projectives illustrate the meaning of souvenirs for children, including how children skillfully use souvenirs in their everyday lives and how they interpret souvenirs as symbols of people, places, and experiences. More specifically, the interview data reveal the meanings attached to souvenirs which are possessed, including how souvenirs are clearly distinguished from other objects which are possessed and how they are used for their contemplation and action value, for their communicative properties, and to provide continuity across time and place. In addition, the data from pictorial projectives reveal the latent motives of souvenir acquisition as well as how different types of places lead to different types of souvenir choices. Thus, the paper demonstrates the many layers of meaning associated with souvenirs in both acquisition and consumption processes and provides evidence that the meanings between children, places, and objects are inextricably linked.
Susan Baker, Keith E. Thompson, Julia Engelken and Karen Huntley
The organic food market is one of the most promising in Europe, although national markets have developed at different rates. In Germany, organics' share of total food turnover is…
Abstract
The organic food market is one of the most promising in Europe, although national markets have developed at different rates. In Germany, organics' share of total food turnover is 2.7 per cent compared with 1 per cent in the UK. This study explores the reasons why the behaviour of consumers in the UK and Germany has been so divergent despite both groups of consumers holding similar attitudes about organic foods. This was done by investigating the underlying values driving food choice behaviour using means‐end theory and Laddermap 5.4 software. In both cases the dominant means‐end hierarchies were uncovered and the cognitive process mapped. Although similarities emerged with respect to values concerned with health, wellbeing and the enjoyment of life, product attributes sought in order to achieve these values were different between the groups. A major difference was found in the absence among the UK group of any connection between organic food and the environment.
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Susan Baker and Sue Holt
The academic/practitioner divide in marketing is very evident in marketers’ real world problems of accountability. Empirical research reported in this paper reveals senior…
Abstract
The academic/practitioner divide in marketing is very evident in marketers’ real world problems of accountability. Empirical research reported in this paper reveals senior non‐marketers perceive marketers to be “unaccountable, untouchable, slippery and expensive” and this is further reflected in the domain literature. Exploration of the issues raises questions about whether marketing educators have failed to deliver the theory and frameworks that could address this problem. Since the 1960s, many tools have been developed and used by marketing educators, academic researchers and consultants that should have helped practitioners to become more accountable; yet something appears to have gone wrong. This paper synthesizes the most recent literature in these areas, contends that accountability is imperative to avoid the marginalization of marketers and proposes an agenda for further research to close the academic/practitioner divide.