The upper class Sri Lankan lifestyle revolves around prestigious leisure clubs in Colombo which have operated since the colonial area, providing recreation and entertainment to colonial administrators and their families. Currently most upper class families visit these clubs 2-3 times a week on average. Women chat to their friends while their spouses and children enjoy a sport, go swimming or watch a cricket match at the club. Some women use the gymnasium facilities in the club regularly or go walking in the grounds. Apart from these leisure clubs, the elite classes are also regularly frequent at restaurants, coffee shops and the seaside. Since there are a large number of public holidays in the country, Sri Lankans enjoy long weekends on a regular basis. During these weekends most families head towards the coastal resorts with their friends.
Another activity significant to the lives of elite Sri Lankan women is shopping. Indeed women meet friends at malls regularly to update their wardrobes. Clothing is very important to Sri Lankan people. Since Colombo is a very small city where most people know each other, most elite Lankans would not want to be seen wearing the same outfit twice. In this sense women‟s clothes symbolises their families‟ social status and it is not unusual for parents and spouses to spend a great deal of money on their daughters and wives‟ clothing.
The upper classes almost never wear traditional Sri Lankan clothes (sari for women) except at weddings. The latest fashions in western clothing are frequently seen around Colombo.
Sri Lankans love music and dance, especially „baila music‟ which originated from Portuguese colonial administrators. Thus elite families frequently go to hotels to listen to live music groups play and attend balls organised by various external bodies to dance. A number of upper class women also attend night clubs regularly but in these cases they are almost always chaperoned by a male. Apart from going out Sri Lankan people entertain guests at their homes regularly, often on short notice. It is not unusual for women to be prepared for guests at any time, particularly at meal times (see also Rana et al., 1998; Rout et al., 1999). The upper classes also celebrate occasions on a grand scale let it be birthdays, graduations, anniversaries or weddings. Many families would host at least 100 guests on average for a birthday party and over 500 guests for a wedding. Weddings are celebrated at five star hotels but some families host their personal parties at such star hotels as well.
As noted earlier, Buddhist temples are another significant social institution that Sri Lankan‟s lives revolve around. Apart from attending temple on Poya days (days dedicated to the Buddha), upper class families provide cooked food to monks (dhane) at least once a month.
These meals are prepared at home and the female members in the house go to the temple to
serve the food before noon. As mentioned before, monks are often invited to homes to partake in the food and friends and family are invited to witness the event and obtain blessings from the monks (see Deegalle, 2006). These events which are known as almsgivings are regular social occasions in upper class homes. Most elite families are also patrons of famous temples in Sri Lanka and therefore take significant roles in organising occasions at temples. Women (especially older women) are usually the main personalities behind these events. Apart from demonstrating religious faith, being the main organisers of these events also symbolises social status.
Overall the contents of this section highlights that the upper classes in Sri Lanka enjoy a very privileged lifestyle which is centred on events, occasions and social obligations. However women are required to take responsibility for these activities and maintain the social image of the elite classes.
Synthesis of key research issues
In this section I will emphasise the tensions, problems and gaps underlying the literature reviewed and highlight the key issues I intend to explore further in my empirical study.
Women at work
An array of research studies has demonstrated work organisations as profoundly gendered, defined in terms of a distinction between men and women (Britton, 2000), and posing considerable challenges to women‟s careers. Scholars highlight how women in western countries engage with their organisational contexts and in doing so, how they reproduce gendered elements of workplaces such as ideal worker norms (see Gambles et al., 2006) by shaping their personal lives to suit organisations and explaining fellow women colleagues‟
unsuccessful career outcomes in terms of their domestic commitments (Lyng, 2010; Bolton and Muzio, 2007). However, little is known about how women from less economically developed, non-western nations enact their careers within their work contexts. Indeed the careers literature has been described as largely ethnocentric (Cohen, Arnold and O‟Neil, 2011), focusing mainly on individuals situated in more economically developed countries in the West (Cohen and El-Sawad, 2009).
Given that research into South Asian work organisations has found gender to be an even more salient issue than it is in the West, highlighting in particular masculine ideas of leadership (Gupta et al., 1998; Jain and Mukherji, 2010), a general lack of family-friendly policies (see Poster and Prasad, 2005), centrality of social capital to career advancement (Saher, 2011) despite women being left out of social networks at work (see Budhwar et al., 2005) and a view that women‟s presence in organisations is still somewhat exceptional – or at least outside the norm (Nath, 2000; Budhwar et al., 2005), I emphasise that there is an urgent
need to better understand how women in these contexts manage themselves within organisations and develop their careers.
Thus I intend to fulfill this significant gap in the extant literature by focusing on how professional women in Sri Lanka make sense of and enact their careers within their work contexts. To my knowledge no studies to date have addressed women‟s experiences at work in Sri Lanka. Given that scholars describe the Sri Lankan context as largely patriarchal (Lynch, 1999) where women are significantly under-represented in senior posts despite comprising the majority of professionals in the labour market (see Department of Census and Statistics, 2009), I except Sri Lankan women to find it extremely challenging to develop their careers within their organisations. However, given that there is widespread acceptance of education and employment for women in Sri Lanka, and scholars argue that Sri Lankan women enjoy much privileged socio cultural statuses than women in other South Asian contexts (see Malhotra and Tsui, 1999; Malhotra and DeGraff, 1997), I expect Sri Lankan women‟s experiences at work to be somewhat different to women from other South Asian countries.
Managing home and work
I argued that home life is significant to understanding women‟s careers, given that women around the world bear the major brunt of domestic affairs and childcare in their households.
In the context of women in the West, I highlighted domestic labour and childcare as significant constraints on these women‟s career development. However, what I see as particularly interesting about the South Asian context is women‟s domestic obligations encompassing not only spouse and children but extending to extended family members as well (see Rout et al., 1999; Rana et al., 1998; Poster and Prasad, 2005). Moreover, studies
suggest that organisational constraints such as ideal worker norms may be more severe in South Asian work contexts than in western work contexts (see Poster and Prasad, 2005) with little support for work-life harmonisation at organisational and state levels (see Budhwar et al., 2005; Rajadhyaksha and Smita, 2004).
In the light of these findings I argue that it is significantly important to see how South Asian women perceive the relationship between home and work and manage themselves between the two spheres in their careers. While studies highlight the challenges South Asian women face in their careers due to conventional gender roles (see Budhapriya, 2009), obligations to extended families (Rout et al., 1999; Rana et al., 1998) and implementation gaps in work-life policies in organisations (see Rajadhyaksha and Smita, 2004), scholars do not address how women deal with these constraints or manage the interplay between home and work in their careers. Thus in my empirical study, I seek to address how professional women in Sri Lanka manage themselves between their home and work spheres in the light of both constraints and opportunities which emanate from them.
Character and women‟s careers
A number of studies provide insights into the perceived moral dangers for women in South Asian contexts when working night shifts and travelling home from work (see Phadke, 2007).
Scholars have argued that women‟s presence alone in the night represents a diversion from traditional norms (Patel, 2006) since women are supposed to reside mainly in private spaces (Phadke, 2007; Patel and Parmentier, 2005). This is of special concern to women at work because increasing numbers of women are required to work non-standard hours with the emergence of the new global economies in many South Asian countries: especially the BPO sector. Scholars highlight how working women in South Asian contexts maneuver around
prevailing norms of moral conduct for women by attempting to articulate themselves as
„culturally appropriate‟ yet „modern‟ women by conforming to normative sexual behaviors, exercising the right amount of freedom for women (see Lynch, 2007; Radhakrishnan, 2009;
Hewamanne, 2008) and striking a balance between work and family (Radhakrishnan, 2009).
One noteworthy study of working class women in Sri Lanka notes that these women regularly divert from the „good girl‟ ideal which they shape through self-control due to concern over their own and their families‟ reputations (see Lynch, 2007).
Scholars talk about how employers attempt to protect female employees from perceived moral dangers and preserve their moral honor by means such as arranging private transportation and male escorts for them (see Radhakrishnan, 2009; Phadke, 2007). However a few studies note that employers are unwilling to hire women since they are obliged to see to their moral safety (see Nath, 2000; Budhwar et al., 2005). Given that increasing numbers of women are joining the professional workforce in the new global South Asian economies which continue to prescribe traditional roles for women, it becomes significant to address how women in these contexts account for good character in their careers and enact their careers in the light of norms of moral conduct for women.
To summarise, our understandings of the social contexts which South Asian women perceive to impact on their careers and how these women engage with these contexts in order to progress in their careers is limited. Thus I intend to fulfill this significant gap in existing literature by answering the following research questions in my study:
1. How do
Organisational contexts
Home and family
The wider context of Sri Lanka
impact on the way professional women in Sri Lanka make sense of and enact their careers?
2. How does moral character play out in the context of professional women‟s careers