Career Woman, Mother, Wife or Daughter: Untangling the Web and Finding a Balance

Abstract

Over the past four decades, feminist and other related research and studies of women’s employment have established the fact that work within the family and employment cannot be fully understood in isolation from each other (Bradley and Healy, 2008; Burke, 2001; Burke and Davidson, 2004; Cooper and Davidson, 1984). Professional women’s domestic regime (Walby, 1997) and commitments to caring responsibilities remain deeply intertwined with their paid work commitments, resulting in women and men entering the labour market on different terms (Bradley and Healy, 2008). In the case of Black African women, while a growing number of women across the continent continue to gain higher educational qualifications and acquire professional jobs alongside men in the formal sector, they also continue to have a complex relationship between work and family life (Nkomo and Ngambi, 2009). Furthermore, studies of the lives of women who do qualify and embark on their respective career paths fail to acknowledge the challenges and limitations placed upon their mobility primarily by their unique cultural histories and defined gender roles (Littrell and Nkomo, 2005:563).

… Both in the Black world and the white world, I’m at the bottom of the pile, and as a daughter-in-law it’s even worse.

(Cathy 37)