Reflections from Women Doctoral Students Lives Regarding Gender Roles

Abstract

Engaging in business life actively with industrialization, modernism movements and making a significant improvement in getting higher education degrees, the women’s getting postgraduate degrees –especially seen as a very challenging and demanding pathway by many people- has various effects on their social lives. The aim of this study was to analyze the interaction between doctoral process and women’s gender roles in daily life. The design of the study was qualitative interview-based and to collect the data semi-structured interviews were conducted. Participants were chosen among the volunteer women doctoral students in Cukurova University. The data collected was analyzed with content analysis. The findings revealed there are many advantages and disadvantages reflected on the women doctoral students’ lives through their doctorate regarding gender roles and they had a lot of difficulties through this process. They put forward recommendations related to various points such as providing equality of women and men and having support mechanisms in order to overcome these inequality related problems. Although they got both support and criticism regarding doing doctorate, women doctoral students have many reasons for doing doctorate which engage them into a devoted endeavor in a sense to get higher education and join more actively in business life.