Mothers, daughters, and learning to labour: Framing work through gender and generation

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a qualitative case study of millennial women in Canada, focusing on how they build meaning and understand “success” in their working lives through a gendered and generational lens. I draw on daughter‐mother interview dyads to offer the framing of an intergenerational labour geography, situating mothers as an important source of work values and expectations for their millennial daughters. I argue that different generations of women have their own sense of “normative competence” or an awareness of expected skills and behaviours around work and family life. Invoking a relational perspective, different definitions and expectations for success in one's working life are grounded not just in the workplace, but also the home, as mothers and daughters endeavour to understand each other. Here, issues of recognition become paramount, as daughters’ beliefs, choices, and experiences may be more or less recognizable to their mothers. My aim is to reveal the complexity within worker identities of millennial women, moving beyond the “factory gates” of the workplace, to think about how young women build meaning and understand “success” at this stage in their working lives.

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