Lived Experiences of Women in Male Dominated Sales Occupation A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Even decades after the suffrage movement, as international platforms attempt to close the gender gap, numerous nations struggle to solve the gender gap puzzle. India s scenario in closing the gender gap requires concentrated efforts from not only macro levels, but also micro fronts, if at all any progress is to be made. Though the number of women joining the organizations are improving, due to diversity policies implemented through the recruitment drives and increasing education levels of females in India, the Female labour force participation rates and Worker Participation rates of females tell us different tales. This indicates a leaky talent pipeline. Researchers attribute the unequal occupational sex segregation in workplaces to be one of the major factors propelling this leak (Anker, 1998). The purpose of this qualitative interpretative phenomenological study was to understand how women made sense of their lived experiences when they accessed an occupationally segregated male-dominated occupation of sales in India. The attempt also was to understand their journey of the work life in this horizontally and vertically sex segregated occupation. Using purposive and snowball sampling, twenty-one women from ten different industries, having at least two to three years experience in the sales occupation participated in the study.