[ 英文摘要 ]

The research subjects of this study are married female flight attendants who have children under the age of 12 in a local airline company of Taiwan. Using qualitative research methods of participant observation and in-depth interview, this research aims to explore the variety of the impact the special working conditions of flight attendants has on their domestic life. By analyzing these flight attendants’ views towards their working experience, this study seeks to contribute to an understanding of the influence of one’s professional/work experience on her personal and domestic life. This paper also discusses how the flight attendants demonstrate individuality in their life style and life strategies facing the clash between their career and domestic life. Focusing on the emotional labor experience and shifting working time schedule system of flight attendants, this study discusses their effects on their experience and strategies in work and domestic life. Considering the historical background of the profession and the changes of airline industry, the entire study also asks a question: how it was, how it is, and how it will be, of the life of married female air attendants?

Based on the Boundary Work Theory, along with the Grounded Theory as the research method, this research finds that the boundary between the work and domestic life of married female flight attendants does not remain fixed; on the contrary, it is constantly shifting according to the change of the recognition of different environments. The flight attendants depend on the life strategy of “mobility” to find a balance point between work and domestic life. However, under the co-operation between capitalism and patriarchy, gender becomes the mechanism which separates service-oriented work and household work, which also constructs the labor and plight of the domestic life of female attendants.

Lastly, this study emphasizes the breaking of the boundary between the public and private domains. The service-oriented work and household work should not be ‘women’s responsibilities’. In both workplace and domestic sphere, the values based on equality and mutual respect and benefits between both genders should be established. Corporations should not view economic activities and domestic life as two separate fields. Besides following laws and governmental regulations and providing welfares to mothers, the corporation should also have reasonable management and systems that respond to the needs of female employees who have children. The only way to achieve gender equality is through the practice and co-ordination of social values, corporate moral values and the welfare system.