Being a Housewife – Is It a Traditional or Progressive Female Gender Role? Understanding Gender Role Constructions in a Transcultural Russian-German Research Setting

This paper is based on a PhD project investigating the au pair migration from young Russian

women to Germany. Two aspects of this project will be discussed: 1) What kind of

biographical research design may be employed in a transcultural research setting and 2) how

does this design help to reconstruct the socio-cultural constructiveness of social categories

such as gender.

The methodological design of the research project consisted of data collection with

biographical narrative interviews mainly done in German language (to lesser extent in English

or Russian with interpretation). Data were analysed by the method of sequential analysis with

a group of researchers, who belong to German and Russian backgrounds, enabling the

reconstruction of cultural specific social categories.

Concerning the question of gender this project depicts how this category not only in everyday

knowledge but also in research is formed by socio-cultural and historically shaped contexts.