Domingo-Cabarrubias 85
earlier study which stated that civil status does not affect a call center
agent’s commitment to work and willingness to stay (Manegdeg
2007), pointed out that the more important issue is whether this
finding reflects reality. She revealed that in her interview with a
human resource manager and a human rights specialist, respectively,
of two BPO companies, they admitted that married women usually
resign from their company after reporting for work for a few weeks
due to the demands of work at home and in the company. Asuncion
surmised that a highly stressful job, coupled with graveyard shifts
would prove to be too much to married women especially if they
have children to attend to and they are still in their child bearing
years.
However, these studies mentioned these concerns merely
in passing, usually in a one-sentence or one-paragraph statement,
and mostly in generalized statements that lack any specific factual
basis. To date, no in-depth study has been conducted on the actual
experiences of women BPO workers and the interconnections
between their work and their traditional domestic or family
obligations.
In a paper presented to the UP Department of Women and
Development Studies, Aldea et al. (n.d.) looked into the womenrelated issues and challenges in the call center industry. The paper
used four case studies and interviews on women who were currently
working or who used to work as agents, team leader, or manager in call
centers. The interviews provide an insight on the actual experiences
of the women workers, and their narration, in the “I” story format,
is a welcome development for the enrichment of the growing body
of research on women’s lived realities. The detailed narration of the
women regarding the effects on them of working in BPO and their
working experiences in general provided a gender dimension to
research on global call centers. However, the paper did not delve
deeper into how these experiences can be viewed in relation to the
social constructions of gender and the assignment of specific roles,
responsibilities and expectations to women and to men, and how,
for instance, these gender constructions colored their experiences.
A more exhaustive research that includes the experiences of women
in the domestic sphere, in relation to their call center job, can enrich
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