Assignment

Women & Leisure : Guide for Biography Interview Project Assignment

1. Assignment Overview. Interview a significant woman in your life (i.e. mother, grandmother, a friend at church or a teacher, a neighbor) who is at least a generation older, video presentation and paper.

2. Introduction of your interview project

a. Who did you interview?

b. How did it go?

c. What answers surprised you?

d. Did you learn anything new about this person?

e. What is the biggest take away or life lesson you received from this interview?

3. Write a paper paper-

a. Requirement details below.

b. that provides a narrative or story about this person's life.

c. Use examples and direct quotes to illustrate aspects of the story.

d. This is a scholarly comparison of one individual's life compared and contrasted to what you have learned about leisure, women, and gender.

e. The paper is not meant to be a "psychoanalysis" but a means to understand the life of another person in relations to leisure.

4. Interview Questions

a. What do you consider your job or career? How has it changed over your life? Is what you are doing different than you had envisioned when you were a child?

b. What has been the nature and relationship between paid and household work over your life? Discuss your satisfaction with your paid and unpaid work life? How has your spouse/partner contributed to unpaid work in the home? Was childcare ever an issue for you?

c. Describe any discrimination (i.e., gender, race, income, age) you have experienced in work and/or leisure. Have you experienced any problems in work or in relationships with male or female superiors?

d. How do you define leisure? What have been meaningful leisure/recreation activities in your life over the lifespan (i.e., what do you love to do)?

e. How has your leisure changed over the lifespan (i.e., in childhood, before and after marriage, before and after children were raised)? How do you think your parents viewed leisure?

f. How do children and your spouse/significant other (if applicable) relate to your leisure today and in the past?

g. What does feminism mean to you and how has it influenced your life?

h. How have you balanced your work, family, and leisure? What priorities do these three areas have in your life?

i. What do you want your work and leisure to be like in the future? What do you want work and leisure to be like for your children?

j. Other questions are wide open to you...

5. Paper format:

a. 5-6 pages in length, double spaced, 1 inch margins, Size 12 font] more

b. Introduction. Describe who you interviewed, their relation to you or why you chose the person, demographic information (in a paragraph) including marital status, age, age at marriage and childbirth, family background of the respondent (parents, siblings, geographic location, culture, ethnicity), education, work background, religious involvement, socioeconomic status both past and present, and children raised. Depending on who you interview, you may know the answers to these demographic inquiries.

c. Body of paper. Be sure to organize your paper.

i. Part I is written from the viewpoint of the researcher (you). This section consists of the guiding questions and their analysis. Remember: You are scholarly.

ii. Part II is written from a personal viewpoint. This section consists of the interpretation of the process questions.

1. These questions include:

a. What conclusions can you draw about work and leisure in the life of this woman?

b. What did you learn that you did not know before?

c. How are you like or unlike this person?

d. How has this woman influenced your attitudes toward work and leisure?

e. What did you learn from doing this research biography project?