The parenthood and career of women managers : A qualitative study on how the parenthood and career of women managers interacts with one another

The aim of our study was to investigate how women in management positions experience the relationship between parenthood and their careers. We also wanted to study how these women experienced expectations from society on parenting in relation to their careers. The study's empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews with eight women in management positions. We analyzed the data from a gender perspective with the help of authors Connell's and Pearse's (2015) concepts of gender domain, gender regime, gender order and gender roles. We also used Elvin-Nowak's and Thomsson's (2001) discourses maintain separate spheres and availability and immunization. Magnusson's (2006) concepts of limitations and delimitations as well as West´s and Zimmerman's (1987) concept doing gender were also applied to the data analysis. The results from our study showed that female managers could be divided into two groups. One group where parenthood was valued higher than professional life and where the female managers had longer parental leave and more days of child care than their partners. The second group valued professional life higher than parenthood and the female managers in this group had shorter parental leave and fewer days of child care than their partners. However, all study participants, no matter the group, felt that parenting and professional life interacted with each other and that one sphere affected the other. Thus, the study participants could not at the same time be as involved in parenting as in their professional life or vice versa. Participants who chose to take greater responsibility for child care did not experience any views from society whilst participants who took less responsibility for child care did. The views were based on the expectations from society on motherhood in relation to a management position