Social and Professional Context of Growth - Women as Home Makers and Managers

This paper explores the processes of growth of women in both the family and work settings and their role as home-makers and managers. From the family, women acquire male and female role models. They also acquire concept of systems and organisations. Family and the national thrust for education provide opportunities for education and as a consequence career aspirations. From experiences of growing up, women evolve emotive and cognitive maps of both people and systems. They then, crystalize their own role. Some of the roles they form are that of the adjuster, the assertive, the drifter, the unappreciated, the misunderstood and the unaffirmed. Organisations often reinforce these roles. This paper examines the struggle of women to go beyond the above stereotypes of both the social and work roles. They discover that social and work role models of past only take them so far. Beyond that, they have to arrive by trial and error and by resillience and commitment with new action choices and new roles. They have to define new concepts of roles and systems and crystalize a meaningful identity relevant for themselves and both the systems of family and work.