Challenges that Kathy Charmaz has faced in her career? Life?

One of the biggest challenges that Dr. Charmaz has had to face as getting a job once she had finished graduate school. Universities were starting to reduce the amount of positions in the sociology departments and it was hard for women to get full time permanent jobs. Most women would get temporary full time jobs. Not only were Universities cutting down on their faculty numbers but they were also starting to question about what was considered “good” teaching.

            As a temporary full time professor at the university her workload increased because many of the other staff members had not finished their dissertations. Later on departments started to talk about what should be considered for someone to get a promotion. One professor argued that what Sonoma takes in account are personality, politics and cronyism. In 1970 it was required to have a PhD and several publications in order to get a promotion. During this time women would also not receive and mentoring from their male mentors on what they should do to keep their jobs.

            By the 1980’s senior staff members were teaching in other departments that had part time openings or worked at other institutions in order to save some of their colleagues. Dr. Charmaz decided to stay in the sociology department instead of move to another program in order to stay at the university. Within the next seven years she received many lay-off notices, and somehow she managed to stay in. In order to do so she taught classes in English, philosophy; and headed the Gerontology Program as well as teaching in the nursing department. Mostly though she spent time teaching a general education course in critical analysis in writing and speaking.

            Now she is a full time professor at Sonoma State, who is still asked to do more then her share. When I first got in contact with her she mentioned that she was going to Japan for two weeks and that she would be away many other times throughout the semester on smaller trips. All of these trips are for her to give speeches at other schools.