“...it felt very difficult to have a voice on or to feel like my ideas were being heard even though I’d had a lot of experience relevant to what we were studying...but no one really seemed to ever address it or seemed to ever do anything other than kind of joke or laugh about the fact that it was a “boy’s club” kind of dynamic.” Interviewee #2
pink
ROADS
Lack of research
continually reflecting
upon our present & future careers
Rationale
shape
shared interest
decisions & identities
in academia
How do female doctoral students
make meaning of their career paths?
CROSS
education
self-determination
Seigfried's (1991) "woman-ness"
+
Kristeva's (1984) "becoming"
Torche (2011)
(vs. epistemological standpoint)
satisfaction
circumstances
Lin (2011)
(vs. "being")
Ph.D. degree...
Higher education...
Gottfredson's (1981) CCS-C theory
Super's (1980) life-career rainbow
&
completion
marriage
earnings
MAK-
MEAN-
-ING
leadership
childbearing
career paths
&
Cross-examine transcripts
semi-structured
interviews
Female Ph.D. Students Reflect on their Career Journey
"code book" of thematic categories
poetry
found
Glesne (1999)
Emergent...
themes
categories
&
“I’m not sure where I’m heading and that can be really scary, to be honest.” Interviewee #4
Looking back
Looking forward
The Eternal Becoming
Looking around
visual overview...
“I was home watching the Buddhist channel. And I heard the Buddhist message … Buddhist monk gave me very good lesson … Somehow that Buddhist master really woke me up
to coming back to school." Interviewee #5
“Making small decisions along the way helped me reassure that I was going through the right path." Interviewee #3
Ubuntu
“Being in the community ... I want to give back to my community and help those individuals who have a hard time finding resources in Spanish because they think it’s really really hard ... It’s important to me because I came from a community that isn’t , it does not have a lot of resources." Interviewee #1
Create a Better Self
The Human Drive
Create a Better World
“I also want to have more of an impact than just the individuals that I work with. I think that I see the potential to have a greater impact through being involved in academia, through being involved in teaching and research ... really wanting to be of help and service and seeing that this might be the way to do it on a larger scale… that I can do." Interviewee #2
“That plays a big role in … getting into retirement and say: Do I have, you know, did I have a fulfilling life … even if my career doesn’t? It's not that, that, that, umm… that shining and good in terms of general standards, how... I know I am going to follow my own standards and for me, ... the standards are going to be higher if I am able to manage to… to… come to my own." Interviewee #3
“But we have a different way of thinking, a different desire, a different concept of what goodness means, so we can balance the world, so I think being a woman is very important in that sense.” Interviewee #5
Soft-core
Intersectionality
The Pink Factor
Bittersweet
“Being a woman has always been in conjunction with my culture and my ethnicity. I have never seen them as separate. I have always wanted to break away from the [gender expectations] because I always thought that as a woman, we can do more than just stay at home to take care of kids and take care of house, which is what my culture sort of expects from women. I always wanted to break away from that and do something more with my life." Interviewee #1
“In education, because women have such a strong presence, I never feel disadvantaged by being a woman or that my voice isn't valued in being a woman. I feel like it's a very good department to be in, in terms of just feeling like an equal member of the classroom." Interviewee #4
Thank you!
How do female graduate students
evaluate their success?
Questions
for
future
How do male graduate students
make meaning of their career paths?
Implications
research
female role models &
strong support network
need for..
time & space to talk about
the balance family-career
rethinking the structures & processes of academia
Questions?
Arellys Aguinaga | Antía González Ben
Laura Hamman | Abigail Lindemann | Lai Wong
International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry
May 24, 2014