Abstract:
Although women increasingly contribute their labour to an ever-burgeoning
workplace, little is understood about their roles and sense of identity at work.
Adopting a phenomenological approach to this study will allow the researcher to
discover what women’s experience of their sense of identity at work encompasses.
Furthermore, a review of the contemporary literature, and a phenomenological
approach to the study employing semi-structured interviews and an
explication of the protocols using the ‘modified’ Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method
(Creswell, 1998), may be used to explore women’s experience of their sense of
identity in the workplace. Recommendations may be made for future research
and organisational practice.
The main findings indicated, inter alia, that the participants expressed their
sense of identity at work from a ‘collective’ or social identity orientation. This
finding also supports various feminist researchers’ viewpoints that women may
develop a unique sense of identity relative to the environment in which they find
themselves (Ely, 1994; Hakim, 1996). Themes that arose from the interviews
with the participants included the concerns women express universally to a
greater extent, yet included their interests, abilities, traits and material characteristics
to a lesser extent (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Hogg & Turner, 1987). The
study findings also questioned psychology-based “person-centred” ideas about
women’s relationships with other women at work, and added credence to the
supposition that the demographic composition of an organisation may influence
an individual’s experiences at work (Ely, 1994, p. 203). Furthermore, as social
v
identities are more significant in organisations, due to the incidence of social
groups (Fisher, 1986; Mortimer & Simmons, 1978; Van Maanen, 1976), it would
appear that as fewer women are employed in management and the upper
echelons of organisations, they would therefore not benefit from being involved
in the social environment of work, and would therefore not be in a position to
adopt the identity of their counterparts (Becker & Carper, 1956). The contribution
of this research to understanding women’s experience of their sense of identity,
and the provision of a basic framework in this regard, may assist female employees,
and their employers and managers, in their relationships at work, and
in this way improve the employment prospects and retention of women.
