Communicating Cultural Dimensions of Gender-related Identity in Female Austrian and Finnish Business Students' Responses to Joanna Kramer (and to each other)

This paper discusses aspects of Austrian and Finnish female business students' responses to the acts and speech of Joanna Kramer in the Oscar winning American film Kramer vs. Kramer. Of special interest are their distinctive conceptions of "equality", "responsibility", "independence" and "choice" in response to the gender-related identity crisis that is the main plot of the film. The cultural meanings of these conceptions were revealed as the following conceptions were played with, or against, each other: "equally divided" and "equally shared" responsibility, "mother" and "father" roles, "family" and "society/day-care centers" in socializing children, and "social partnership" (Austrian) and " sisu " (Finnish) in societal as well as wife-husband relationships. At one level, these conceptions are analyzed as revealing cultural conceptions of personhood and sociation, each of which positions social identities of gender differently. At another level, introduction to a discovery process suggests how perplexity...