Although women have been playing increasingly important roles in the restructuring of the contemporary American economy, relatively little research in geography or other fields has focused on the impact of individual decision making by women trying to reconcile responsibilities both at work and at home on their patterns of employment. This doctoral dissertation research project will examine the role that acquisition of domestic services has on the women who provide such services as well as on women in the middle- and upper-income households that employ domestic servants. Primary quantitative and qualitative data will be gathered through surveys and interviews with domestic workers and employers of domestic workers in three different neighborhoods in the San Diego metropolitan area. Longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of these data will be undertaken using a range of statistical procedures. This project will provide valuable new insights into the dynamics of employment and locational decision making among two groups of women -- professional women who have entered labor markets in increasing numbers in recent decades, and domestic servants, most of whom are recent immigrants from developing nations whose migration to the U.S. was spurred by other dimensions of global economic change. This project will contribute to understandings of the interplay between paid employment and domestic responsibilities, the role of women's paid and unpaid work in local labor-market dynamics, and the role of gender in international migration and the operation of immigrant labor markets. As a doctoral dissertation improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.
