Women’s strategies in balancing career and family in the academic community in Serbia: Differences in ethnic and social origins
Even though the confrontation of women with the necessity to seek a balance between career and family in academia has become a subject of various research studies, a structural solution for this phenomenon still does not exist. The goal of this paper is to compare the narratives of Hungaria...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institute of Ethnography, SASA, Belgrade
2020-01-01
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| Series: | Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU |
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| Online Access: | http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-0861/2020/0350-08612002295L.pdf |
| Summary: | Even though the confrontation of women with the necessity to seek a balance
between career and family in academia has become a subject of various
research studies, a structural solution for this phenomenon still does not
exist. The goal of this paper is to compare the narratives of Hungarian
ethnic minority and Serbian majority female university staff members working
at the Universities of Novi Sad and Belgrade, with respect to the
difficulties they face when balancing family life and academic career. The
qualitative research was based on twenty semi-structured interviews,
conducted in 2014 and 2015. The findings show that women when balancing
between their careers and families used certain strategies to explain their
views and decisions. The challenge of finding work-life balance is great for
women, who decide to deal with it on a micro level, in their own family and
in their own way, to keep up with their commitments. Although these are
women with the same socio-economic status, the intersectional analysis
showed that there is a difference between the strategies used by respondents
of different nationalities when balancing their career and family, and that
their different social origin, family and life circumstances lead to
establishing differences between these professional categories of women. The
abovementioned differences lead to new inequalities between women in
academia. |
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| ISSN: | 0350-0861 2334-8259 |