Juggling Demands and Resources: Low Wage Women Making Sense of Bill-Paying Hardships

<p>This qualitative study, using grounded theory, examined how 19 low wage working women use global meaning to make sense of lived experiences with bill-paying hardships. Two themes with subthemes and corresponding meaning making processes emerged into a conceptual framework. The first theme is caring for others with subthemes of responsibility, isolation, and survival and a meaning-making process called the daily grind. The second theme is spirituality with subthemes of God, blessing, and God's plan with the meaning making process called the daily hope. The findings indicate that the women's global meaning influences how they respond to the imbalance between their low incomes and basic needs costs. Three implications are: the women need (1) long term social and economic support for their commitments to care for their households, (2) mutual aid to ease their sense of isolation; and (3) social and economic policies to enhance their hope for opportunities to increase assets over time.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Campus Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

College of Social Work

Year

2012

Author dc:creator

• Parlier, Susan Taylor

Contributors dc:contributor

• Arlene B Andrews

• Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Social Work
• Global Meaning
• Grounded Theory
• Low wage
• Meaning-making
• Qualitative
• Women

Statement dc:rights

• © 2012, Susan Taylor Parlier

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/1911

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarcommons.sc.edu:etd-2912