Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

4-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Abstract

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore systems of empowerment and support for female members of a patriarchal society who work full-time outside of the home. Specific to this study are the lived experiences of female members of The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church) who are married, have at least one child at home, and have full-time employment outside the home, and the systems of support or empowerment that have been in place, or that they wish had been in place. Ten participants described their experiences as they related to working full-time outside the home, and the phenomenon of systems of empowerment or support that they experienced for doing so. To achieve this, in-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with the participants to gather data that identified the systems of support or needed support. Methods that were used to analyze the data were thematic analysis, and interpretive phenomenological analysis. Based on the data derived from the interviews, eight themes with an additional 10 subthemes emerged. The first theme is support, with two subthemes, namely received and wished for. The second theme is messaging, with three subthemes: past, current, and mixed. Third is mom guilt. Fourth is personal revelation. Fifth is impact on self-efficacy. Sixth is personal thoughts and beliefs on their church community being a patriarchal society. The seventh is their upbringing and early beliefs about roles. Eighth is advice for others, with two sub themes of advice for women, and advice for men. The ninth theme is their motivation to work. Also identified are four implications for practice: equal autonomy for women in personal revelation; promoting of women supporting women; working toward hierarchy rather than patriarchy; and intentional, consistent, and clear messaging. Keywords: empowerment, support, patriarchy, self-efficacy, personal revelation

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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