Women Volunteering, 1984

This data set contains open-ended, unstructured interviews with 45 women, described in a book by Kaminer, "Women Volunteering: The Pleasure, Pain, and Politics of Unpaid Work from 1830 to the Present." The interviews explore the relationships among volunteering, feminism, and family life for women in the 1980s. The participants vary in age, ethnicity, and race. Some of the women volunteer exclusively; some are former full-time volunteers, now in the paid work force; some combine volunteering and paid work. The interviews examine the satisfactions and dissatisfactions that volunteering brings to these women's lives. In the unstructured interviews, the women speak candidly about their personal decisions and motivations to volunteer. The Murray Archive holds additional analogue materials for this study (interview transcripts). If you would like to access this material, please apply to use the data.