Feminist working mothers : promoting female emancipation within the Maltese family, raising children as independent agents of cultural change

Abstract

This research study investigates the lived experience of feminist working mothers as they strived to live their feminist ideology within the family. The project explores the feminist influences on the children as their mothers nurtured them to adulthood, incorporating the cultural shifts perceived, if any, in the advancement of gender equality within society. Six working mothers, identifying as feminists, and within a heterosexual marriage, participated in one-to one, semi-structured interviews reflecting on their lived experience in bringing up their children. These reflections required a qualitative study using an interpretative phenomenological approach in analysing the data. Emergent themes include the mothers’ understanding of feminist ideology and how they applied it in their lives; coping with their career within motherhood; their reaction to motherhood; and an intergenerational picture of the influences starting with the maternal mother through to the mother and the emergent adults of today. Analysis suggests that the participants view feminism similarly to those definitions found in the West, showing much diversity in their interpretations. Living a feminist ideology was seen as difficult particularly in the combined worlds of motherhood and work. Other findings show how the participants struggled to break the cycle of generations past and their unhappy childhood hoping to give their children a better future. The influences on the children resulted in young adults having strong feminist values of equality and justice auguring healthier perspectives for a well-balanced society.