Naslov
Narrating life and labour. Fragmented lives of working women in Croatia

Autori
Barada, Valerija ; Primorac , Jaka ; Šarić, Marija

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
BOOK OF ABSTRACTS. 37th International Labour Process Conference / - , 2019, 20-20

Skup
37th International Labour Process Conference: "Fragmentations and Solidarities"

Mjesto i datum
Beč, Austrija, 24.04.2019. - 26.04.2019

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
women, labour, work, biographies, interview, narrative

Sažetak
Researching labour conditions and lives of working men and women has only recently regained interest in Croatian sociology. This absence can be explained by the burden of this topics’ ideological saturation stemming from the socialist Yugoslav era. Research interest in post-socialist times shied away from the stigmatized issue of labour and was reinstated mainly due to the economic crisis and deterioration of workers’ rights and labour market segmentation. The post-socialist and post-transitional Croatia is undergoing a thorough systemic transformation of human and labour conditions. In such societal framework, women’s working lives prove to be an empirically and theoretically generous topic, since they can be used as a showcase of both gender specific and broader social changes. It can be claimed that women get social recognition by participating in the labour market, which establishes paid work as a legitimate frame for investigating the complexities of their social position. Used as an encompassing concept that does not even out women’s social positions, work biographies explain both the similarities and differences of female social statuses. Women have been given and have gained access to the labour market, however exploration of their individual life and work trajectories shows that more complex phenomena come to the fore. Namely, Croatian women, as they narrate their lives, gain social status primarily through family status. The accounts of working women in Croatia show that despite differences in their socio-economic status and/or educational attainment their lives are still shaped by structural constraints of family, and often married life. The data for this presentation was obtained through mixed methods research project “Social stratification in Croatia: structural and subjective aspects”, and focuses on narrative interviews conducted with 25 women on their work biographies. Participants were sampled in two waves: 1) in a national-wide questionnaire potential interviewees stated their willingness to participate in the qualitative part of the project ; 2) using the snowball method to complement the first wave. The sampling criteria included employed women older than 30 years of age with substantial labour market experience. Research sample’s maximum variation was ensured in both the social and labour position of women, as well as their regional dispersion, since the interviewees come from nine cities of all historical, but culturally different Croatian regions. Additionally, interviewees were dispersed over age cohorts (30-40, 41-50, 51-60, over 60). The interview protocol was adjusted from McAdams’s (1993) technique of nuclear episodes, and consisted of three parts. At the beginning women retold their life story focusing on different life episodes ; after that they were asked to single out the most positive and most negative life events. Additionally, interviewees were asked to retell their work biography, finishing off with their class self-positioning. This sampling and interview method have ensured grasping of the (fragmented) specificities of women’s lives and labour in their complexity.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

POVEZANOST RADA