The experiences of working women coping with the super woman ideal and multiple roles: A phenomenological study

Super woman ideal; it is associated with women who try to maintain multiple and often contradictory roles (super mother / wife / employee/housewife, etc.) together and with difficulty. Today's working woman is expected to be good both at home and at work, excel in both traditional feminine roles and masculine roles, and do all of them and be good at all. In addition, while women are expected to be both skilled, diligent, an ideal housewife and a good mother, and a successful, confident, independent career woman in the workplace, at the same time women are wanted being well-groomed, fit and beautiful. So the super woman ideal; it consists of the perceived and open expectations of the parents, co-workers, employees and society and the expectations placed by the women themselves. In addition to these cultural expectations, working women encounter a second shift waiting for them after their first shift, and take on the majority of responsibilities in housework and childcare. In this context, how women can balance both shifts has been the subject of many studies. However, against the multiple role demands of women the situation that needs to be emphasized in terms of both balancing the motherhood/ career and meeting the cultural expectations is the third shift that constitutes their struggle with these two shifts and little is known about this shift. From this point of view, the main purpose of this study is to reveal the cultural ideals and expectations of women in Turkish society, their experiences of being a woman in society and their multiple roles, to describe the meanings they derive from these experiences and their perspectives towards the ideal of super women and It is to fill the gap in the literature by determining the coping strategies related to them. In line with this purpose, an inductive inference was made by questioning the perceptions of being a woman in Turkish society, the perspectives of the super woman ideal and the methods of coping. In this context, data creation and analysis techniques of qualitative research with phenomenological design, a qualitative research method, have been adopted. In the scope of qualitative research, criterion sampling and maximum diversity sampling, which are purposive sampling methods, were used. The research consists of two stages. In the first stage, according to the scores obtained with the Super Woman Scale (SCI) and Self-Roller Inventory (ÖRE) applied to 971 women working in Aksaray and Bursa, women were divided into three groups as "rejection", "approving" and "uncertain". In the second stage, semi-structured interviews were held with 50 volunteer women. Thematic content analysis of the interviews was conducted using MAXQDA 18 qualitative research program. According to the findings; Looking at the pre/post marital and post-maternal experiences of women, there are increasingly multiple role demands and responsibilities. In addition, women are faced with the expectations of being a "good mother, good wife, good son, good employee, good bride, good friend, etc.". All of these expectations reveal the expectations of "both traditional and modern women: being a super woman". Against these cultural expectations and ideals, women's individual ideals, individual preferences and perspectives towards the super woman ideal are discussed in 3 groups: (1) "a dream they want to reach" for those who approve of the super woman ideal, (2) It is "an imposition" of society, the media and men, and "an unrealistic, impossible ideal" for those who reject the super woman ideal, (3) for those who are "uncertain", it is in the form of a "social reality" that they undertake unwittingly and brought by their obligations. In addition, based on these three perspectives, strategies have been determined for women to cultural ideals and cope with multiple roles. According to this; Women who depend and "approve" the super woman ideal use strategies to maintain all of their multiple role demands and cultural expectations together. "Rejecters" implement strategies for setting borders, making choices, balancing and struggling. Those who remain "uncertain" experience syndrome, depression and burnout by not being able to cope with the super woman ideal rather than implementing a conscious strategy. Considering the findings obtained, the suggestions of women were examined in the conclusion part of the thesis, and suggestions for future academic studies were made. First of all, in this study, besides the domestic and employee roles of women, the traditional roles that the identity of women assigned to them after the role of mother and wife were examined. Accordingly, "traditional roles" that were added to the study as adapted to Turkish culture can be used in future studies. In addition, a measurement tool can be developed in this study using contextual factors contributing to the superwoman role, adding traditional roles and coping methods. The measurement tool in question can be used to examine men's experiences as well as women's experiences examined in this study. In addition, the experiences of women in different socio-demographic, ethnic and religious groups regarding the concept of the superwoman ideal can also be examined in future studies.