Women’s Everyday Creative Activities: a Qualitative Study

Abstract

The objective is to analyze manifestations of everyday creativity from the perspective of a group of women. We are interested in recovering the voices of the participants to understand constructed meanings regarding the actions, emotions, relations and contexts to unfolding processes of every-day creativity. We conducted a qualitative study, in which 20 Argentine women aged between 21 and 69 years participated. The sampling was not probabilistic, intentional and for convenience. The participants reside in cities of intermediate size, namely Córdoba, San Luis and Mendoza (Argentina). They reported daily, during one week, on the creative activities in which they were engaged in their lives. The process of data collection was done through WhatsApp; participants sent texts, audios, videos and photographs. We codified and analyzed the data with the QDA MINER LITE program. We constructed four categories of analysis: doing creative things; others and creative contexts; emotions in play and creative self-belief. The results indicate that people relate creativity to different types of work (cooking, handicrafts, academic activities, artistic workshops, solving daily problems, etc.). Others play an important role in creativity as the recipients of creative work, collaborative co-workers or helpers that facilitate creative tasks. The development of everyday creative activities is also linked to well-being and positive emotions (pleasure, passion, desire, satisfaction, self-realization and personal expression). We highlight the importance of creative identity as a complex construction of expectations, self-evaluations and metacognitive processes. The research contributes to the understanding of everyday creativity as a factor that promotes health and the empowerment of women.