Back to PWI Magazine- Q1 2013 

 “Gender” is a relationship in a particular social context, that is enacted, reproduced, thus it can also be transformed…
 

By Alessandra Zocca

My PhD thesis about the well-being among senior women managers was awarded this prize by the Social and Political Science Faculty (SSP-UNIL), because of the originality of the methodology that I developed and of the practical implications of my research for women, health and work issues…I must admit it was a beautiful surprise, a wonderful reward for my work.
For many years I have been interested in women and work, in particular in how their work responsibilities & duties fit into their lives alongside their private priorities (family, but also social and personal lives). For instance, a long time ago I conducted an exploratory study on women working as “housekeepers” in Mexico, admiring their capacity to cope with their children, their jobs, their housework, etc… A few years later I was completely fascinated by understanding how women - that have succeeded in breaking through the “glass ceiling” in the private/public sectors in Switzerland - cope with multiple responsibilities and manage to respond to simultaneous requests stemming from different contexts (family, social, work, personal lives).
After my PhD, I was given a grant by the Belgium FNRS (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique) as a postdoc fellow at the UCL (GIRSEF-CIRFASE Department at Université catholique de Louvain on Academia.edu) to continue my analysis on work-life interference issues.
My research coordinator and I are now studying work-life interferences amongst young highly skilled women and men at the beginning of their career, holding precarious positions in the academic “greedy”, demanding and competitive institutional context.
Although there is an undeniable increase in the number of women holding executive functions in Switzerland, this population is still a minority (10-15%), considering that 46% of the total workforce is represented by women. Unfortunately some of the main trends tend to focus on either a “pathogen” approach of work-family conflict as a source of stress and fatigue.
However, there is a lack of scientific literature concerning women senior manager’s well-being by taking into account their concrete life conditions from their own perspective, in a non-reductionist fashion. My study tackled this challenge through the analysis of these women’s everyday activities using a qualitative method.
Our main findings suggest that subjective well-being is a changing process involving the body, the social and the psychological levels of a person.
By making sense of their experience, women develop original resources when being frequently confronted by contradictory and conflicting priorities, responsibilities, values and norms in four “realms”: work, family, social and personal lives.
Among these women’s resources we have identified:

• Supports giving a feeling of control, such as organisational devices to respond to multiple obligations (paying for childcare, making to-do lists, etc.)
  
• Supports meant to let go of the feeling of control such as: relaxing and resting by creating spaces of “one’s own”; taking a 15 minute break in silence, breathing, having a drink, going to the movies, reading a book, going swimming;
  
• Social-affective supports, that is participation in several social groups (the workplace, family life, friends, clubs, political commitment, etc...).
  

Overall, even though women senior manager’s professional and/or family responsibilities demand a great amount of energy and time, their lives are not reduced to these two realms. Subjective well-being emerges from participation in a plural, changing and often conflictive social context. Difficulties impeding this process were also identified.
My methodology was characterized by an original interview device. Women were interviewed at their workplace, or at any other place, depending on their choice. The method involved two interviews separated by a six month interval:

• The first one consisted in a detailed description of “a day in the life” from a subjective point of view of the interviewed women: it was an interesting way to access routines, habits, gestures, in other words, every taken for granted detail that is apparently without importance but happens to be essential in the end.
  
• Six months later each woman was interviewed in a reflective way to discuss the activities described during the first interview.
  

What are the practical implications of your research?

Finally, my research allowed me to create a method and a tool that has been shown to be of great use for women senior managers to work on different life realms in everyday life, on the supports that can contribute to their well-being in their life situation or, on the contrary, what may be impeding this process. Such a tool is based on concrete situations and uses reflection as a key element to “slow down” and think about one’s own life conditions and experiences.
This is a very interesting question, Alessandra.
Whereas there are a large number of women at the beginning of the scientific career (PhD, postdocs), this number diminishes dramatically among higher positions (e.g. Professors, Head of research departments, etc.). We observe the opposite trend among male counterparts…
I am very proud of being part of a research project where we focus on the first stages of the scientific career in order to better understand:

• How the selection process of academic excellence might operate,
  
• How everyday practices in the academic field ‘deal with’ men and women differently,
  
• How gender plays a role in work-life among women and men.
  

Gender differences vary among disciplines as well.

In the regular business, it depends on the field. There have been debates concerning this topic. Moreover, efforts have been made at political and institutional levels to promote women’s careers, their well-being, and work-family balance, aiming to reduce the “gender gap index”.
However, women are still under-represented. I believe that in the future we should not focus only on women, because this may paradoxically stress their position as if they were “the problem”…
Men can also be concerned by these issues. For example, there is no reason to believe that “family priorities” are important to women only. By focusing on such a belief, we may indirectly reinforce the “traditional female role” and consequently, the male role as the main “breadwinner” too. Where women are still under-represented, institutions should take responsibility to improve gender inequalities.