Reflexive Self-Identity and Work: Working Women, Biographical Disruption and Agency

Abstract

The article examines how women workers reflexively shape their self-identities and work identities following a significant biographical disruption incurred by breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Based on interviews with 22 women navigating their post-diagnosis life course, the article addresses participants’ challenges in their relationships with paid employment, their responses and self-identity narratives. It finds that women strive to revise and innovate their self-identity and work identity in the midst of personal and social constraints in working life. They craft their cancer disruptive experiences into new developments of who they are, and want to be, as persons and as workers. Multiple intersectional features of participants’ work-related self-identity are identified, including reassessment of priorities, capabilities and workplace relations.

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