Experiences of professional women who left work after becoming mothers, the case of Turkey

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2022-12

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Güven, Esra

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This study aims to understand why professional women leave work after becoming mothers in Turkey. The concept of opting out is used throughout the study to refer to mothers’ experiences of leaving work while making a critique of personal choice. Professional women were chosen as a target group to contribute to the debates on opting out in Turkey. Drawing on the data obtained from semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 participants who were working in professional and managerial positions before leaving their careers, this study examined: (I) the reasons behind professional women leaving work after becoming mothers, (II) the implications of leaving work on mothers’ lives and (III) the relationship between leaving work and motherhood ideology. The findings indicate various social, cultural and structural reasons behind these mothers’ leaving work. Especially in Turkey, where the gendered division of labour in unpaid domestic and care work and mothers’ socially constructed role as primary caregivers are reinforced by the existing state policies and the motherhood ideology within and beyond the family, work-life conflict is a serious issue for professional women, making them question their priorities over paid work and motherhood. A working mother’s guilt that later transforms into nostalgia for working life signals contradictions experienced by women as professional workers and mothers. While the participants do not embrace traditional values regarding motherhood and women’s work, leaving work and adopting intensive motherhood becomes a form of identity construction for professional women and a strategy against the barriers in the labour market and work-life conflict.

Subject Keywords

motherhood, opting out, professional women, Turkey, work-life balance

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/101214

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

E. Güven, “Experiences of professional women who left work after becoming mothers, the case of Turkey,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2022.