I’ve tried to combine and organize the ideas from the questions you all developed in class and e-mailed me. I’ve divided them into three sections: Basic Background Info, Work History and Attitudes, and General Issues. Remember, these are just to help you get started. You will probably have other questions that will be important in your interview, while many of these will not be appropriate. But even if you think you know the answers to many of these questions, try to get responses in your narrator’s own voice—and you may be surprised by responses to things you thought you knew! In addition, when you write up your paper, be aware that you will not include all of these responses, only those that work best to help you tell the story about this woman you want to tell.. Ask more questions to get you as much data as possible.

1. Family history. Parents’ (or primary caretakers birth place, dates of birth, educational backgrounds, work/occupations.
2. Narrator’s date of birth, birthplace, siblings, educational opportunities.
3. Narrator’s race, ethnicity, first language, religion, sexual orientation, political background and beliefs, etc.
4. Narrator’s current work and family circumstances. Job title. How many hours a week (in and out of home)? If other adults are in the house, how many hours do they work, and where? (Work primarily in or out of home? A lot of both? etc. Mainly be sure to remind your reader regularly that you are not just asking about paid work outside the home, but the unpaid work she does in the home, for her church or community organizations, etc. Help her remember to talk about all of these issues.)

1. What was your first job? How did you get that first job? What did the work involve? How old were you? Did you expect to keep that job for a long time? How much did you earn? What did you do with the money?
2. Did you work among mainly women, men, or both? Were your co-workers your age, younger or older? Were your bosses men or women? What did you think of your co-workers? Your boss(es)? Did you make friends at that first job? Did you socialize with those people outside of the workplace? Why did you stop working there? What did you like best about that job? What did you dislike most about it?
3. Did you have a plan about future jobs? Did you think you would stop working if you got married? How did you get your next job?
4. Did you ever have a job where it was possible to move up to a position that would bring more money, a better title, or more interesting work? What was the best job you ever had? Why? What was the worst? Why?
5. Have you ever stopped working since you began? For what reasons? How was this decision made?
6. What do you usually do when you come home from work? What do other adults in your home do when they come home from work?
7. How have your husband/partner(s) felt about you working? What kinds of childcare arrangements have you made over the years? How have you felt about these? How has your partner felt? Has childcare been an important part of your responsibilities in the household?
8. How is/was other household work divided up among family members? How many hours of your work week are devoted to household labor? How many hours do your adult partner or teen or older children living in the home spend on household labor? (Laundry, cleaning, cooking, yard and home repair, auto maintenance, etc.)
9. How do you think your work career experiences would have been different if you had been a man? What parts of these differences would you have liked? What parts would you have not liked?
10. What were your career goal when you were finishing your schooling? Would you say that you had an overall plan for your work life? Were you able to follow that plan?
11. Did your education prepare you for your work/career?
12. Did your education offer you the same opportunities boys your age received?
13. Have you ever experienced what we would now call sexual harassment while at work? (A hostile work environment, sexual advances or overtures, refusal of promotion for gender-linked reasons?)
14. If you had your choice of all the jobs in the world, and could get the right training/education, looking back, what would you have done? For job satisfaction? For money? For happiness?
15. Are you concerned about your financial status later in your life? If you were suddenly widowed or divorced or left without your partner, would you need to be concerned about your financial situation as you age?

1. Reflections on life: What was the happiest time of your life? What has been the most fulfilling time, in terms of work (whether in or out of the home)? What has been the most unhappy time? What would you do differently? What advice would you offer a younger woman completing her education?
2. Reflections on the changing role of women in our society: Have women’s opportunities changed since you were a young woman? In what ways do you think the situation is better for women? In what ways is it worse? Why?
3. What changes do you hope to see for younger women in terms of their lives and choices?
4. Within the context of the period discussed, be sure to explore the effect of various events and movements in your narrator’s life (WWII, the Depression, the Women’s movement, Civil Rights Movement, and local events of significance in the area in which she worked).

You won’t need all these questions, and you may need others not represented here. The best interview will use these questions/ideas as a springboard to developing questions that will meet your need as an interviewer/researcher and will best encourage your narrator to tell her story.

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