Article review

‘I'm farming because I'm a wife’ – An enduring navigational approach to meaningful work and vocational choice

Mai Chi Vu a,*, Diep Nguyen b, Stephen Teo c, Nicholas Burton d

a Monash Business School, Monash University, Australia b 1. University of Newcastle, Australia; 2. Honours College, University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam c 1. Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia; 2. Honours College, University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam d Northumbria University, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O

Keywords: Meaningful work Occupational choices Non-Western context Family farming

A B S T R A C T

This paper investigates how meaningful work is sustained under conditions of social and cultural constraint. Drawing on interviews with thirty-eight female farmers in Northern Vietnam, it ex- amines how meaningfulness emerges as an ongoing navigation between unification, the moral obligation to preserve familial harmony and social continuity, and contribution, the desire to act purposefully and be valued. The findings reveal a process of enduring navigation through which meaningful work is sustained, extending Rosso et al.'s (2010) framework, by showing that uni- fication and contribution are not necessarily complementary pathways but can remain persis- tently in tension. Meaningful work is sustained not through resolution but through moral endurance, enacted in three recurrent dynamics: vital yet invisible, enduring yet confining, and conforming yet reclaiming. These dynamics shape vocational trajectories by normalising farming as a moral duty, constraining alternative aspirations, and preserving a quiet openness to future vocational possibilities. Meaningful work, in this view, is a relational and moral practice, a continual navigation of tension rather its resolution, recasting endurance as a subtle form of agency that enables individuals to preserve coherence, moral worth, and possibilities within constraining structures.

1. Introduction

While meaningful work has received increasing attention in management and organization studies, there remains a lack of consensus regarding its conceptualization (Allan et al., 2019; Bailey et al., 2019; Lysova et al., 2023). This ongoing lack of consensus stems largely from the breadth of its framing and the coexistence of multiple, sometimes conflicting, perspectives on what makes work ‘meaningful’ (Bailey et al., 2019). The field continues to grapple with substantial variation in how meaningful work is theorized, whether as a subjective, individually constructed experience; an objective or normative good; or a socially and culturally embedded phenomenon (Lepisto & Pratt, 2017; Michaelson, 2021). These divergences have led to the development of several approaches to understand how meaningful work unfolds, including temporal (Bailey & Madden, 2017), tensional (Mitra & Buzzanell, 2017; Vu & Fan, 2025), worthwhile (Bailey et al., 2025) or normative perspectives (Michaelson, 2021), each offering a particular insight into

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.C. Vu), [email protected] (D. Nguyen), [email protected] (S. Teo), n.burton@

northumbria.ac.uk (N. Burton).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Vocational Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2026.104279 Received 23 April 2025; Received in revised form 1 July 2026; Accepted 26 July 2026

Journal of Vocational Behavior 169 104279

Available online 30 July 2026 0001-8791/© 2026 The ( . 6 Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license . 4 ) / 26 0/ 26 6 :

how meaningfulness is experienced, sustained, and sometimes lost. However, most of these frameworks remain rooted in Western, white-collar organizational contexts, overlooking the socio-cultural and moral complexity of work (Boova et al., 2019; Vu, 2022) in, for example, non-Western, informal settings. This Western-centricity bias also assumes the universality of autonomy-driven constructs such as purpose and self-realization, while neglecting how collectivist values, and cultural and social norms shape meaning in everyday work (Bailey et al., 2019; Vu, 2022; Vu & Shin, 2025).

We argue that such contexts, particularly those structured by patriarchal and collectivist moral orders, provide fertile ground to expand existing theories of meaningful work. In patriarchal societies such as Vietnam, women's vocational identities are shaped by deeply rooted Confucian ideals of duty, harmony, and filial piety. Within this context, female farmers occupy a distinct position: they are indispensable to the family's livelihood yet remain socially invisible, as their labour is framed as moral duty rather than personal achievement (Ha et al., 2017). The neglect of such dynamics in existing research represents a critical gap, as it overlooks the tensional nature of meaningfulness in contexts where work can foster social cohesion while simultaneously constraining autonomy and aspi- ration (Toraldo et al., 2019).

To explore how meaningful work is constructed and sustained within constraints, we conducted an in-depth qualitative study of thirty-eight female farmers engaged in rice farming, floriculture, and horticulture in Northern Vietnam, a region marked by patrilineal family structures, Confucian gender norms, and subsistence-based agricultural labour (Gammeltoft, 2022). We ask: How do individuals construct and sustain a sense of meaningful work within enduring social and cultural constraints, and how does this shape their vocational choices? The question illuminates how meaningful work can be sustained in contexts where autonomy and self-realization are not necessarily the primary sources of meaningful work. By examining how individuals negotiate obligation and purposeful contribution within collectivist and patriarchal settings, the study seeks to advance broader, culturally grounded perspectives on meaningful work.

The study makes three key contributions. First, it challenges and extends Rosso et al.'s (2010) framework by unpacking the interplay between the pathways of Unification (connection, harmony, duty) and Contribution (purpose, impact, significance) as not inherently complementary, but deeply tensional. We develop and conceptualize an enduring navigational approach to meaningful work, showing that meaningfulness is sustained through ongoing moral negotiation between obligation to others and the desire for purposeful contribution. This approach brings into view the relational and moral labour required to sustain meaningfulness within constraint, revealing three core dynamics through which this navigation unfolds: essential yet invisible, sustaining yet entrapping, and harmonizing yet resisting.

Second, this approach reveals how meaningful work shapes vocational choice under constraint. We demonstrate that moral endurance influences vocational trajectories through negotiated commitment within familial and cultural obligations This results in three interrelated orientations toward work: (1) normalization of work as duty, where work is internalized as moral responsibility rather than vocational choice; (2) the suppression of alternative aspirations, in which desires for change are (re)absorbed back into familial obligation; and (3) quiet readiness for vocational possibility, where endurance cultivates skills, confidence, and moral awareness that support individuals for future adaptability. Thus, vocational continuity in constrained contexts should not be inter- preted as a lack of imagination but as a moral strategy for coherence and belonging.

Finally, the study offers practical implications for policymakers, NGOs, and organizations seeking to support women's work and well-being in agrarian and family-based economies. It also opens avenues for future research on how meaningful work is navigated in other morally saturated, collectivist, or informal work settings.

1.1. Unpacking the Unification-Contribution pathways of meaningful work

Meaningful work has increasingly gained scholarly attention in management and organization studies (for reviews, see Allan et al., 2019; Bailey et al., 2019; Lysova et al., 2023). Broadly, meaningful work is defined as work that is significant, worthwhile, or valuable to oneself and/or others (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003; Rosso et al., 2010). Scholars have distinguished this experience from the meaning of work, which concerns the beliefs, values, and understandings individuals hold about their work (Roberson, 1990; Ros et al., 1999), and meaningfulness, which refers to the felt sense of significance or worth that arises from these interpretations (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003; Rosso et al., 2010).

From a psychological perspective, meaningful work has been conceptualized as an individual construction, shaped by self-concept, beliefs, and lived experience (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003), giving rise to a subjective account of meaningful work in which individuals are seen as the primary agents in determining what makes work meaningful (Bailey et al., 2019; Rosso et al., 2010). In contrast, socio- logical approaches emphasize that meaningfulness is not self-generated but socially and culturally cultivated, emerging through shared norms, value systems, and institutional contexts (Geertz, 2017; Mead, 1934; Vu & Shin, 2025). Such approaches incorporate the interplay between societal, political, organizational, and individual dimensions that shape how meaningfulness is experienced (Bailey et al., 2019; Laaser & Karlsson, 2022; Lepisto & Pratt, 2017; Lysova et al., 2019).

From these perspectives, normative approaches to meaningful work extend the discussion further by arguing that work must not only be meaningful to the individual but must also possess meaning for others and carry moral worth independent of personal perception (Michaelson, 2021; Vu & Burton, 2022). Scholars have advanced dynamic frameworks that account for the complexity, contextuality, and temporality of meaningful work. For instance, Bailey and Madden (2017) propose a temporal perspective, sug- gesting that meaningfulness is neither stable nor purely personal, but an episodic experience shaped by individuals' changing social relationships and collective circumstances. Similarly, the tensional approach views meaningful work as an ongoing negotiation of contradictions, where subjective experiences of meaning shift as professional, social, or organizational contexts evolve (Mitra & Buzzanell, 2017). Experiences of work meaningfulness may also fluctuate between gain and loss during crises (Vu & Fan, 2025) or emerge through continuous justification and recalibration of self–other expectations in sustaining its balance (Lips-Wiersma & Wright,

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2012; Vu & Shin, 2025). Furthermore, building on Lips-Wiersma's (2002) qualitative study, Rosso et al. (2010) proposed four key pathways to meaningful work: Individuation (self-agency), Self-Connection (self-communion), Unification (connection to others or higher purposes), and Contribution (impact and significance to others). The authors argue that work experiences may activate multiple pathways, potentially strengthening perceptions of meaningfulness through additive or interactive effects. However, they also acknowledge that these pathways do not necessarily operate in harmony or simultaneously, calling for empirical research to explore how they interact, conflict, or evolve in practice. Bailey et al. (2025) emphasize that individuals discursively evaluate their work as worthwhile amid relational tensions, underscoring the need for expanded empirical inquiry to inform a more complex interplay be- tween personal meaning-making processes and the social, cultural, and relational conditions that shape how work is interpreted, negotiated, and sustained over time.

To move these conversations forward, and in response to substantial variation in how meaningful work is understood across subjective, social, and normative perspectives (Michaelson, 2021), we focus on the dynamic interplay between the Unification and Contribution pathways. Although meaningful work research has paid limited attention to what happens when its different pathways intersect (Rosso et al., 2010), these intersections offer an important lens for understanding how meaningfulness is experienced, contested, and reconfigured. The interaction between pathways may generate tensions that require individuals to navigate competing moral, relational, and personal imperatives as meaningful work is increasingly recognized as contested and inherently tensional (Bailey et al., 2019). Examining such tensions therefore shifts attention from how meaningfulness is achieved through alignment to how it is continually negotiated and sustained amid conflict. We focus on the relationship and interplay between Unification and Contribution for three reasons.

First, while existing research has tended to privilege self-oriented pathways such as Individuation (self-agency) and Self-Connection (authenticity and self-communion) (De Boeck et al., 2019; Oelberger, 2019), this individualistic orientation, rooted in humanistic psychology and positive organizational scholarship, positions workers as independent agents capable of self-determining meaning through their choices and identity alignment. However, such views obscure the paradoxical reality that meaningful work is both individual and social, arising not only from self-expression but also from embeddedness in relational and moral worlds (Bailey et al., 2019; Lepisto & Pratt, 2017; Vu, 2022; Vu & Shin, 2025). While scholars argue that there is a need to balance self-other dynamics in sustaining a sense of meaningful work (Lips-Wiersma & Wright, 2012), this balance is increasingly understood as tensional rather than attainable (Bailey et al., 2019; Mitra & Buzzanell, 2017; Vu & Fan, 2025), challenging the notion that meaningfulness is a purely subjective experience, and revealing instead that it is sustained through interdependence with, obligation to, and recognition from others. Consequently, an overemphasis on self-oriented pathways risks obscuring how meaningfulness is co-constructed through and with others. The sense of meaningful work is not simply discovered within the self but emerges through ongoing negotiation with the ‘other’, whether that other is one's community, family, organization, or broader cultural value systems. Unification and Contribution pathways, on the other hand, foreground the socially embedded and ‘other’ oriented aspects of understanding meaningful work. These pathways therefore shift attention from self-realization to relational interdependence, acknowledging that in many moral, communal, and collectivist contexts, meaningful work emerges through obligations to others rather than autonomy from them.

Second, although Rosso et al. (2010) originally presented the four pathways as complementary, they also highlight that they are not always mutually reinforcing but may instead coexist in contextual tension. For example, in collectivist or relationally embedded settings, pathways such as Unification (connection to others or higher purposes) and Contribution (impact and significance to others) may conflict rather than converge, as individuals, such as CSR practitioners, must uphold collective harmony while demonstrating personal impact and accountability (Vu & Shin, 2025). In doing so, they continuously justify their efforts to serve the community and organizations without undermining their own sense of worth, revealing how the pursuit of social contribution can paradoxically constrain individual agency under strong cultural and relational expectations. Therefore, when activated simultaneously, the two pathways of Unification and Contribution can generate tensional, and at times contradictory, experiences of meaningful work, where sustaining harmony may require self-suppression, and acting purposefully may disrupt the very relationships through which work becomes meaningful. Examining this interplay offers a way to theorize meaningful work as a lived negotiation between coherence and personal significance. Bailey et al. (2019) argue that such contradictions reflect non-resolvable paradoxes that characterize the very essence of meaningful work as workers derive meaning through duty and service while being bound by institutionalized expectations and hierarchies. In such settings, meaningful work is a continuous struggle to navigate moral, relational, and structural contradictions, a dynamic that we argue becomes even more salient in non-Western collective contexts such as agricultural settings, where gendered work-family dynamics blur boundaries, reinforce women's marginalization (Smyth et al., 2018; Whatmore, 1991), and shape in- dividuals' work choices (Afiouni & Karam, 2019; Allen et al., 2024).

Third, much remains unknown about the processual and dynamic interplay through which individuals navigate the above com- plexities and tensions in their everyday work. Limited studies have shown that workers often engage in an ongoing process of justi- fication to sustain a sense of meaningfulness amid competing moral, relational, and institutional demands by (re)interpreting contradictions between personal aspirations and collective obligations to maintain coherence and purpose (Vu & Shin, 2025). Although existing research recognises that meaningful work may fluctuate in response to changing circumstances and tensions (Bailey & Madden, 2017; Mitra & Buzzanell, 2017), we know considerably less about how individuals sustain meaningfulness when such tensions cannot be resolved. This is particularly important when Unification and Contribution make competing demands that persist within everyday moral and relational life. Their interaction may require individuals to preserve personal coherence and relational belonging while simultaneously responding to obligations extending beyond the self. Addressing this gap requires examining how people interpret, inhabit, and act within enduring contradictions. From this perspective, meaningful work lies not in resolving contradiction, but in sustaining a workable sense of meaning within it.

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1.2. Toward a navigational approach to meaningful work

Building upon the above arguments, we advance a navigational approach to meaningful work that foregrounds how individuals sustain meaningfulness amid persistent structural tensions. This approach extends existing perspectives that understand meaningful work as a continual process of negotiation and justification (Bailey et al., 2019; Vu & Shin, 2025). We argue that this process involves navigating between Unification and Contribution, that is, the desire to belong to and maintain valued relationships with others and the desire to make a consequential and recognized contribution beyond the self. By navigation, we mean the situated interpretive and practical work through which individuals respond to competing demands without necessarily resolving them. Examining the dynamic interplay between these two pathways allows us to address three key concerns in existing research.

First, it responds to the overemphasis on self-oriented perspectives that privilege autonomy, authenticity, and personal fulfillment. A navigational approach redirects attention to the relational and interdependent foundations of meaningful work, showing that meaningfulness is co-constituted through the ongoing negotiation of complex and tensional self–other relations (Lips-Wiersma & Wright, 2012; Vu & Shin, 2025). Meaningfulness arises not simply from balancing self and others, but from continually negotiating the demands of Unification and Contribution: maintaining connection to valued collectives while seeking to make a contribution that matters within and beyond them. In this view, individuals continually navigate how to sustain harmony with others while also seeking recognition that their actions matter. For example, a worker may conform to organizational norms to preserve collegial trust (Uni- fication) while simultaneously striving to have their individual efforts acknowledged as making a worthwhile difference (Contribu- tion). These orientations coexist but often pull in opposing directions, creating enduring tension rather than a resolvable equilibrium.

Second, while prior frameworks have tended to assume complementarity between the pathways of Unification and Contribution in generating meaningful work (Rosso et al., 2010), a navigational lens reveals their contextual variability and potential incompatibility. In culturally embedded contexts, these pathways may not reinforce but instead destabilize one another, producing experiences of compromise, or even moral strain. For instance, Florian et al. (2019) ethnography of German refugee volunteers shows how collective humanitarian ideals initially unified volunteers around a shared moral purpose, yet later became a source of disillusionment and burnout when shifting societal discourses questioned the worth of their contribution. Meaningfulness, therefore, is not necessarily sustained through alignment, but through the ongoing navigation of contradictions between belonging and agency, obligation and aspiration, and collective coherence and individual contribution. This highlights that meaningful work extends beyond workers' ca- pacity to craft or shape their identities and environments as expressions of autonomy and self-determination (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). We argue that the very same values that generate meaningfulness such as solidarity, moral duty, or public good, can also impose constraints that erode it. A navigational approach thus frames experiences of meaningful work as the ongoing effort to sustain sig- nificance and purpose through engagement with persistent contradictions, to establish provisional coherence without achieving final closure amid competing moral imperatives.

Third, this approach foregrounds the processual and reflexive nature of meaningful work. Individuals engage in situated acts of endurance, adaptation, and (re)interpretation to preserve coherence when resolution remains unattainable. From this standpoint, meaningful work is neither a stable state nor the outcome of resolving competing demands; it is an ongoing accomplishment enacted through everyday judgements, adjustments, and micro-negotiations. Such an approach reveals how meaningfulness is continually reconstituted through the oscillation and negotiation between unification and contribution, stability and change, and obligation and aspiration. Navigation therefore does not refer to linear movement toward resolution, but repeated efforts to determine what can be preserved, accommodated, resisted, or relinquished under conditions of constraint.

To explore this approach, we ask: How do individuals construct and sustain a sense of meaningful work within enduring social and cultural constraints, and how does this shape their vocational choices? We examine this question through the context of family farming in Vietnam, a setting that vividly reveals how female farmers navigate moral obligations, familial expectations, and collective interdependence in sustaining a sense of meaningfulness in everyday farming. The following section outlines and justifies this context in detail.

1.3. Research context – farming in the landscape of Vietnam

Vietnam's agricultural sector provides a deeply embedded social and cultural terrain for examining how meaningful work is constructed and sustained under constraint. Vietnam, an agricultural country, had around 7.1 million hectares of rice fields in 2022. Known as one of the world's largest rice producers, Vietnam's agricultural production remains small-scale (Ha et al., 2017). The sector employs approximately 25.6% of the national workforce, predominantly through small-scale family farms that account for over 70% of the country's rice production (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2025). In rural northern provinces, patrilocal living arrangements, where married couples reside with the husband's parents, remain common, encompassing 40–50% of farming households. These arrangements are sustained by land inheritance customs and filial obligations rooted in Confucian traditions (Gammeltoft, 2022; Gruijters & Ermisch, 2019). This household structure reinforces gendered divisions of labor, with women contributing approximately 63% of on-farm manual labor while maintaining limited decision-making power (Vietnam Women's Union, 2018). In addition, while the country's traditional ‘rice culture’ has historically granted women a high status within families due to their proficiency in crop planting (trồng trọt) as well as their adeptness in managing household finances (tay h!om chìa kh”oa), in rural agricultural regions, particularly in Northern Vietnam, the dynamics between wives, husbands, and in-laws are deeply influenced by traditional patri- archalism, rooted in Confucian principles and ideologies (Guilmoto, 2012; Pham, 1998).

Vietnam's cultural norms exert a profound impact on gender-based hierarchical positions within Vietnamese farming families despite the critical role Vietnamese women play in socioeconomic development in farming households (Ha et al., 2017). In patrilineal kinship systems, a wife living with her husband's family is expected to show respect and submissiveness toward both her husband and

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parents-in-law. Wives therefore often occupy a subordinate position within the household, while husbands are treated as the family pillar (trụ cột gia đình) and parents-in-law are regarded as senior patriarchs (Knodel et al., 2005; Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2022; Rydstrøm, 2006a, 2006b). Rooted in Confucian ideals, these norms reinforce women's dependence on their husbands and in-laws and shape both their work roles and their standing within the family (Pham, 1998).

Within this context, women play an indispensable yet undervalued role, undertaking both domestic and agricultural labour while sustaining the moral fabric of family life through filial duty (hiếu) and harmony (h!oa). Within these patrilocal multigenerational households, men are not absent from farm life, rather, labour and authority are unevenly distributed. Participants' accounts (such as Le's discussed later on in the findings) and prior research suggest that husbands and fathers-in-law typically hold positions of household authority and make key decisions about contracts, agricultural inputs, and the broader direction of farm production, while daughters-in-law undertake much of the routine agricultural labour alongside domestic and caregiving responsibilities (Ha et al., 2017; Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2022). Mothers-in-law often occupy an intermediary role, providing intergenerational care while also helping reproduce household expectations and regulate daughters-in-law's conduct and recognition within the family (Gammeltoft, 2022; Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2022; Rydstrøm, 2006a).

The patrilineal family system in rural Vietnam creates a powerful moral and social hierarchy in which wives and daughters-in-law are expected to demonstrate obedience, sacrifice, and diligence (Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2022). Therefore, women in agricultural families have limited involvement in decision-making or financial matters, often consulting their husbands and in-laws about supplies and labor availability (Ha et al., 2017). Due to the traditional conceptions of women's roles, Vietnamese female farmers typically lack good education and access to power or information needed to advance their autonomy, knowledge, and skills (Ha et al., 2017). Women are particularly disadvantaged as they spend nearly twice as much time as men on unpaid housework (Vietnam Women's Union, 2018). The inequality of roles and responsibilities between women and men in Vietnam's agriculture sector has rendered women dependent on men for their daily livelihood. Although women make major contributions to the household's livelihood, this patrilineal kinship structure can still weaken their sense of belonging within the in-law family because their labour is often treated as expected duty rather than as a basis for recognition or authority (Gammeltoft, 2022).

We contend that this context provides a promising ground to unpack the complex interplay between the pathways of Unification and Contribution (Rosso et al., 2010). Unification, the alignment of the self with family, community, and higher moral purposes, is deeply embedded in Confucian traditions that valorize harmony, obedience, and filial duty over self-expression. In contrast, Contri- bution, the experience of significance and recognition through one's work, is constrained by patriarchal norms that cast women's labour as moral obligation and duty rather than personal achievement. Within this social and cultural order, women's efforts are celebrated as devotion yet obscured as duty, rendering their contributions vital but invisible. This tension makes Vietnam's farming context a compelling site to explore how the sense of meaningfulness is not merely found but continually negotiated.

2. Methods

2.1. Research approach

The study employed an exploratory grounded approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). We approached the interviews without an extensive interview schedule, opting instead for a semi-structured and emergent approach. We began the interviews by describing to participants that our focus was on their experiences as female farmers, exploring meaningful aspects of their work, the obstacles they encountered, and how these experiences shaped their approach to work (see Appendix 1 for interview guide).

During our follow-up questioning, we specifically sought in-depth explanations of the sense of meaningfulness expressed in par- ticipants' narratives and the ways in which they interpreted, justified, or re-evaluated their experiences. For example, participants were invited to elaborate on earlier responses through prompts such as, “What other factors might have influenced this?” or “Can you tell me more about how you felt in that situation?” This iterative approach enhanced pragmatic validity (Sandberg, 2005) by encouraging in- terviewees to situate their reflections within concrete social and cultural contexts and to elaborate on the reasoning behind their experiences. The interviews evolved into dialogical exchanges rather than one-sided interrogations, allowing participants to articulate their lived experiences in their own terms and enabling a deeper understanding of how they made sense of work, obligation, and meaning within their everyday lives.

We focused on participants' interpretations and the local language and expressions they used in their rural communities. Narrative sharing allowed participants to make sense of their experiences (Mueller, 2019), while their distinctive use of local language offered insight into how they understood and negotiated their gendered roles as farmers, women, wives, and daughters-in-law. Attending to these narratives also helped us examine how social positions were negotiated (Harr”e & Van Langenhove, 1999) and how power and inequality were enacted in everyday discourse (Van Dijk, 1999).

The study was conducted in May 2022 in Vietnam by the first author and involved face-to-face interviews with 38 female farmers in rural northern provinces engaged in rice farming, horticulture, and floriculture. It forms part of a larger study examining non-Western approaches to meaningful work in family farming. Data collection took place after Vietnam's nationwide COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted and agricultural operations in rural northern provinces had largely returned to normal (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, 2021). While some participants briefly mentioned pandemic-related disruptions (McLaren et al., 2020), such as male family members returning from urban jobs and temporary increases in domestic work, these effects were described as short-lived echoes rather than transformative changes. Their accounts consistently emphasized enduring social norms, particularly patrilocal family structures, gendered divisions of labor, and expectations of filial duty (Ha et al., 2017) as the dominant forces shaping their work experiences.

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We used a snowball and purposive sampling approach. The first author initially contacted several acquaintances who were female farmers; these acquaintances then introduced and helped recruit additional participants. It was crucial for us to be introduced to the local female farming communities by locals, as rural Vietnamese communities tend to be skeptical as less open to outsiders. To foster a safe and localized environment, the first author invited a small number of non-participating female farmer acquaintances to observe selected interviews. These individuals were trusted community peers or elders from nearby villages, recruited through snowball sampling but excluded from the final participant sample. They were not family members of interviewees, nor individuals later interviewed, which minimized the risk of relational influence. Their presence was culturally appropriate, as communal witnessing is a normative practice in rural Vietnamese settings, where it can help legitimize research activities and enhance participants' comfort and trust (Ngo, 2019). To ensure that observers did not affect participants' responses, we conducted post-interview debriefs and compared narrative patterns between observed and individual interviews, finding no discernible differences. This reflexive practice aligns with ethnographic protocols for collectivist and patriarchal contexts, where third-party presence can sometimes facilitate, rather than inhibit, open disclosure (Mirabito et al., 2025).

All participants were married and worked on their in-laws' family farms. The dynamics between their cultural roles as daughters-in- law and their work within these family farms made it particularly insightful to explore their narratives, as these were shaped by gendered expectations and local cultural norms. More specifically, mothers-in-law, having once occupied the same subordinate po- sition as daughters-in-law, gradually transition into enforcers of patrilocal and Confucian hierarchies as they gain elder status, often following the birth of grandchildren (Nguyen & Rydstrom, 2022; Rydstrøm, 2006a). Their authority derives from Confucian ideals of filial piety and moral seniority, though it remains relationally mediated and secondary to fathers-in-law's formal decision-making power. This liminal elevation between subordination and dominance creates a paradoxical position: mothers-in-law embody endur- ance and resilience while simultaneously reproducing the very patriarchal expectations they once endured. In this sense, they both model Unification, through moral exemplarity and intergenerational care, and regulate Contribution, by gatekeeping access to family resources and recognition. Through this dual role, mothers-in-law shape how daughters-in-law navigate coherence, duty, and aspi- ration within the gendered order of rural households (Gammeltoft, 2022). This intergenerational hierarchy continues to structure women's vocational and positions within the family farm, as daughters-in-law sustain familial harmony and duty under the scrutiny of

Table 1 Female farmers' demographics.

No Pseudonym Age Family status (years married) Type of farming

P1 Tu 36–45 Married with 3 children (18) Horticulture P2 Le 36–45 Married with 4 children (15) Floriculture P3 Thuc 26–35 Married with 2 children (10) Horticulture P4 Chi 36–45 Married with 2 children (21) Rice farming P5 Nghia Above 45 Married with 3 children (29) Horticulture P6 Minh 18–25 Married with 1 child (3) Rice farming P7 Hao 36–45 Married with 2 children (22) Floriculture P8 Hien 36–45 Married with 2 children (17) Horticulture P9 Duong 36–45 Married with 2 children (21) Floriculture P10 Hang 18–25 Married with 1 child (5) Rice farming P11 My 26–35 Married with 2 children (11) Floriculture P12 Linh 36–45 Married with 2 children (24) Rice farming P13 Lam 26–35 Married with 2 children (10) Floriculture P14 Tuong 18–25 Married with 2 children (4) Horticulture P15 An 36–45 Married with 3 children (19) Floriculture P16 Thien 18–25 Married (2) Rice farming P17 Ly 36–45 Married with 2 children (17) Horticulture P18 Truc 18–25 Married with 2 children (6) Horticulture P19 Yen Above 45 Married with 2 children (31) Rice farming P20 Vy 26–35 Married with 1 child (7) Floriculture P21 Diem 26–35 Married with 2 children (8) Horticulture P22 Ngan 26–35 Married with 2 children (13) Rice farming P23 Chau 26–35 Married with 2 children (12) Floriculture P24 Huong 18–25 Married (1) Rice farming P25 Anh 26–35 Married with 2 children (13) Floriculture P26 Hanh 18–25 Married with 2 children (6) Horticulture P27 Xuyen 26–35 Married with 2 children (8) Horticulture P28 Quynh 26–35 Married with 2 children (8) Rice farming P29 Trinh 36–45 Married with 2 children (17) Horticulture P30 Tam Above 45 Married with 3 children (25) Floriculture P31 Nga 26–35 Married with 2 children (11) Rice farming P32 Uyen Above 45 Married with 2 children (33) Floriculture P33 Kieu 26–35 Married with 2 children (11) Horticulture P34 Nhien 26–35 Married with 2 children (10) Horticulture P35 Tuyet 18–25 Married (1) Rice farming P36 Bong Above 45 Married with 3 children (34) Floriculture P37 Tien 26–35 Married with 1 child (7) Horticulture P38 Bao 18–25 Married with 1 child (5) Horticulture

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both elders and kin. Table 1 details the study participants' characteristics. Data collection and analysis proceeded in an iterative manner to monitor emerging themes throughout the process to assess when

saturation, the point at which no new conceptual insights or patterns arose, had been reached (Dunwoodie et al., 2023). Saturation was achieved when the core tensional patterns between Unification and Contribution (e.g., between obligations to sustain familial har- mony and aspirations for purposeful recognition) began to recur with conceptual consistency across participants. By the 23rd inter- view, no new dimensions of this negotiation were emerging; subsequent interviews reinforced these dynamics rather than extending them, thus saturation was reached, and the existing categories were sufficiently rich to explain participants' experiences. For instance, with 38 participants across three farming types (rice, horticulture, and floriculture), the data showed consistent patterns in how women described their experiences of meaningful work, duty, and constraint. The diverse sample and iterative coding process ensured both conceptual depth and contextual breadth. This approach aligns with Dunwoodie et al.'s (2023) emphasis that saturation should be evaluated through conceptual sufficiency and theoretical completeness rather than numerical thresholds, ensuring that our findings capture the depth and diversity of lived experiences while reflecting the relational tensions at the heart of meaningful work.

2.2. Data analysis

We employed an inductive and exploratory qualitative approach to explore how individuals understand themselves and their social environments. We particularly paid attention to lived experience or the ‘lived world’ (Wertz, 2005, p. 169) and the social context (Heidegger, 1962) as individuals experiences are inseparable from and intersect with the local culture and context.

While going through the data, we particularly recognized the role of pronouns in the Vietnamese local context. For instance, all participants in our study used the pronoun ‘em’ (I) to respond to questions. Vietnamese role nouns combine kinship terms (e.g., #ong – old male; b!a – old female) and occupation terms (e.g., b”ac sĩ – doctor; luật sư - lawyer), with gender and age explicitly denoted in the kinship term. There is an implicit social hierarchy associated with both age and different professions that influence pronoun choice (Ngo, 2019). By using ‘em’ regardless of the interviewer's younger age, participants signaled their awareness of occupying a socially less prestigious position as women living in rural areas.

Participants also drew upon traditional proverbs to illustrate expectations from their roles as wives and daughters-in-law in their family farming. Cultural discourses and issues are frequently conveyed through stories and materials found in folklore narratives. These narratives, which emerged from the wet rice agricultural civilization over 4000 years ago (Ngoc, 2002), served as a response to the enduring struggle of farming communities in the Red River delta and neighboring plains in Northern Vietnam against the recurring threat of floods (Nguyen et al., 2021). They reflected people's aspiration to transcend the impact of natural disasters, drawing upon the symbolism of sacred mountains. Over time, these narratives evolved into means to articulate Vietnamese people's their daily expe- riences and hardships.

Two authors of the paper are native Vietnamese speakers, which enabled us to draw on deep local and cultural understanding when unpacking and translating participants' language, dialect, and customary expressions. This cultural fluency proved essential for interpreting proverbs, metaphors, and gendered idioms that revealed moral and social nuances in participants' accounts. To ensure authenticity, we consulted our interpretations with female farmer acquaintances (e.g., local participants who served as community informants) to verify that the narratives and contextual meanings were captured faithfully. For translation accuracy, we also worked with a bilingual expert with over 25 years of experience as an English teacher and interpreter for Vietnam's national television station, particularly for translating culturally embedded expressions and proverbs.

At the same time, we acknowledge our positionality based on our cultural and research backgrounds (Mirabito et al., 2025). The two Vietnamese authors were raised in urban environments, with no personal roots or direct exposure to rural farming communities beyond academic and professional engagements. This urban insider status, rooted in shared national dialect, kinship norms, and Confucian socialization, facilitated cultural resonance and empathy, while our lack of lived rural experience positioned us as partial outsiders to the farming context. This outsider position heightened our attentiveness to participants' voices and prompted deliberate bracketing of urban-centric assumptions about rural life. Other co-authors contributed theoretical distance and critical detachment, constructively challenging culturally embedded interpretations and enhancing analytic rigor. Throughout data collection and analysis, we engaged in reflexive journaling (Berger, 2015; Dunwoodie et al., 2023) to examine how our cultural positions shaped meaning- making and interpretive decisions. Our analysis proceeded through four distinct phases.

2.2.1. Phase 1: inductive identification of salient statements We employed an inductive approach to immerse ourselves in the data. Each author thoroughly reviewed the data multiple times,

creating a preliminary outline of key statements derived from interviewees' narratives. To reduce bias and ensure consistency among coders (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), each of us independently coded the same subset of five transcripts to identify initial codes and compare interpretations. This allowed us to identify and discuss discrepancies, refine our interpretations, and reach a shared un- derstanding of thematic boundaries before proceeding to the remaining data. Once consistency was achieved, each author then coded additional, non-overlapping transcripts using the agreed coding framework. In doing so, the authors engaged in reflective analysis (Horrigan-Kelly et al., 2016), making sure that preconceptions and personal biases or assumptions did not the coding process.

We coded and looked for statements to gain an understanding of how contextual and cultural factors (e.g., the customs of their local community, social expectations] in rural areas of a patriarchal society, etc.) influenced participants' interpretations of their experi- ences as female farmers. This process allowed us to compare coding interpretations, discuss discrepancies, and establish a shared understanding of thematic boundaries before proceeding to code the remaining data. Once coding consistency was achieved, each author then coded additional, non-overlapping transcripts, applying the agreed coding framework and iteratively refining categories

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through regular team discussions. After coding all the statements, we went back to the data to ensure that all coding assignments were appropriate.

In developing the codes, we also paid attention to the differences in farming type and their influence on female farmers' experiences of work. Although participants engaged in diverse types of small-scale farming (rice farming, horticulture, floriculture), the identified patterns of their experiences were consistent across farming types. Because all participants were drawn from small-scale family farms, differences in farm size, crop type, or production scale did not emerge as major sources of variation in women's roles. Instead, their experiences of work and meaningfulness were shaped more consistently by gendered household arrangements, patrilocal family structure, and familial and cultural expectations in rural areas.

2.2.2. Phase 2: surfacing the tensional dynamics We moved beyond the initial descriptive coding to examine how participants constructed meaning through ongoing tensions and

within constraints. Drawing on Rosso et al.'s (2010) pathways to meaningful work, we identified tensions between unification (actions that bring individuals into harmony with other beings or principles) and contribution (actions perceived as significant and/or done in service of something greater than the self), and that the participants' experiences were characterized by tensional rather than linear dynamics. Although traces of individuation and self-connection were visible in the data, they appeared in relationally mediated forms, as participants' reflections on self, capability, and aspiration remained deeply shaped by obligations to family harmony, duty, and contribution to others. For this reason, unification and contribution emerged as the most analytically central pathways in our inter- pretation of the data. Specifically, three recurrent patterns captured how meaningful work was sustained through the ongoing nav- igation of constraints.

For instance, the vital yet invisible tensional dynamic reflected how women's contributions, though essential to the family's liveli- hood, were culturally framed as duty rather than value – female farmers' labour unified the family through service and obedience but simultaneously undermined their recognition as contributors; the enduring yet confining tensional dynamic illuminated how meaning emerged through persistence and endurance within constraints) – unification reflects women's alignment with familial order to pre- serve harmony while contribution is redirected toward shared endurance, channelling purpose into the collective rhythm of persis- tence and finding coherence through continuity with others; and the conforming yet reclaiming dynamic showed a more reflexive form of endurance, one that maintained harmony outwardly while quietly reclaiming agency – unification continues to bind female farmers to their familial duties but contribution is redefined as an mutual recognition and finding purpose in sustaining the very order that conceals their labour. These three dynamics revealed how meaningful work was experienced as an enduring navigation process, a continuous balancing between the need to unify with social expectations and the desire to contribute in ways that affirm one's and collective worth. Table 2 shows the representatives quotes of the tensional dynamics within this stage of analysis.

2.2.3. Phase 3: linking tensional dynamics to vocational orientations Building upon the identified tensional dynamics, we explored their implications for women's vocational choices (see Table 3 for

representative quotes). By examining how enduring navigation unfolded and shaped female farmers' logic of staying, adapting, or imagining alternatives about the work that they are doing, we identified three overarching patterns that structured female farmers' vocational trajectories: (1) normalization - farming was internalized as a moral obligation or virtue rather than a vocational choice; (2) suppression – alternative aspirations for work were reabsorbed into familial duty, sustaining coherence through self-limitation; and (3) quiet readiness - endurance evolved into a form of quiet preparedness, where women's skills and solidarity nurtured a latent readiness for future change without overt resistance.

Table 2 The tensional dynamics of the interplay between Unification and Contribution.

Tensional dynamics Representative quotations

Vital yet invisible Last year we got double harvest because I was able to change the planting pattern and it helped our farming a lot, but my in-laws just said it was due to good weather. They don't realize that I planned it carefully like the sisters…But it's not worth arguing with them, it's better to keep the peace. (Hao) I'm the one who wakes up early in the morning to check the field water and the seedlings …Without me, the plants would die…the sisters all say that…but nobody sees it as a big thing, and I don't really want to say anything as well, so we don't argue. (Tuong) (Contribution – significance of work acknowledged by the sisters vs. Unification – filial duty, harmony within family farming)

Enduring yet confining Even when I'm sick, I still go to the field. If I stay home, my mother-in-law will say I'm lazy. I tell myself this is what a good daughter-in-law should do. It's tiring, but I just keep going because at least I see the sisters understand my situation, that's life for women like us, you know… (Uyen) I'm good at what I'm doing, the sisters all know that, but for all these years getting up early and doing all the hard work, nobody in the family really cares…it's just us in the field, and sometimes that's all that matters to me, knowing this village too well (Bao) (Contribution – significance of work unnoticed vs. Unification – maintaining obligation and harmony via collective endurance)

Conforming yet reclaiming

I do what my in-laws tell me to do, but I also save some of my own seedlings to different things. It feels good knowing I can improve the yield, even if no one notices. (Truc) I used to feel upset when my husband and my in-laws take my work for granted. Now I don't wait for that. I just tell myself that sometimes you must give yourself the recognition others won't. (Nghia) (Contribution – reclaiming recognition, agency and worth through reflexive awareness and self-validation vs. Unification – preserving harmony through outward conformity and duty)

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2.2.4. Phase 4: constant comparison and conceptual refinement To ensure analytical rigor and theoretical depth, we applied a constant comparative method throughout the process (Strauss &

Corbin, 1990). This involved continuous iteration between empirical material and emerging conceptual structures to refine both the descriptive and theoretical levels of analysis. For instance, through constant comparison across cases, we moved from describing women's lived tensions to theorizing the underlying logics that structured their tensional experiences of meaningful work. Rather than treating the pathways of unification and contribution as discrete, we examined how they dynamically intertwined, producing tensional dynamics that unfolded through female farmers' enduring navigations between familial harmony, duty, and the desire for recognition and agency amid structural and cultural constraints. This process illuminated how the sense of meaningful work was sustained not through resolution but through continual navigation, where endurance served as both the condition for, and the expression of, meaningful work. These analytic steps resulted in the three tensional dynamics and three vocational orientations presented in the findings below.

3. Findings

3.1. Navigating between Unification and Contribution: an enduring experience of meaningful work

The experiences of female farmers in Northern Vietnam reveal that meaningful work is not a fixed or fulfilling state but an enduring process, a continual navigation of cultural, relational, and moral tensions. Female farmers sustain meaning by balancing two inter- dependent yet tensional and conflicting desires: unification (to belong, preserve harmony, and uphold moral order) and contribution (to be recognized for the significance through their work). This enduring navigation unfolds through three interrelated experiences: Essential yet Invisible, Sustaining yet Entrapping, and Harmonizing yet Resisting that we unpack below.

3.1.1. Vital yet invisible Female farmers described a strong sense value and purpose when working alongside other women in the fields. Within these c”ac chị

em (sisters) communities, they experienced solidarity, freedom to voice ideas, and mutual validation, forms of recognition that were often absent in their family farming enterprises. Yet, this same sense of belonging simultaneously illuminated the invisibility of their labour and the lack of acknowledgment from their in-laws. Their daily experiences thus embodied an enduring tension: they felt valued and visible among their c”ac chị em, but unseen and undervalued within their own family homes and businesses.

“I love coming to the field, it makes me feel ‘home’ among my sisters (c”ac chị em) [group of women in the field]. I can freely talk about my ideas for work here, which gives me meaning. But you know what, the more I do it, I feel desperate because it makes me realize that I'm a member of a family and a family business where nobody values what I say or do when I discuss work…but at the end of the day, I just want to get along with my family…”

(Nga)

Nga's reflection reveals a striking contradiction between her indispensable contribution to the family's agricultural production and her social invisibility within the household hierarchy. She explained: “…I'm the one who is harvesting, making sure that the products are qualified for distribution and meet the TQC (Center for testing and quality certification) (trung t#am kiểm nghiệm v!a chứng nhận ch#a!ất lượng TQC) and ISO 22000 (ISO 22000:2018 for Food Satefy)…I am the main worker here”. However, Nga's role within her own family business remains invisible: “…[but] nobody seems to appreciate me”. Nga's work is s both essential and invisible, vital to the functioning of the family farming, yet unacknowledged in its moral and economic accounting. This contradiction highlights how Vietnamese rural

Table 3 The tensional dynamics shaping female farmers' vocational choice.

Vocational choice Representative quotations

Normalization as duty Farming is what we all do…our work keeps the home's blessings (phúc), so I never thought of it as a choice. It's just what keeps the family together. (Diem) Since getting married, I've been working on the farm. I've never thought about doing anything else, it's all I've ever known as other women in the village. It's our duty to help the family. (Chau) Vital yet invisible – Women sustain the family's livelihood through essential yet unacknowledged labour, finding meaning in continuity and duty rather than change.

Suppression of alternative aspirations

I am good at drawing and painting, but nobody thought I can earn money with that skill. I stayed to farm because I didn't want to upset anyone. Now, when I see others opening souvenir business in the village, I just tell myself this life is already set for me. (Tien) My dream was to learn tailoring, but after marriage I became busy with the field and family. I told myself I'm doing what I should, what's right for the family. (Quynh) Enduring yet confining – Women maintain moral and familial order by internalizing endurance as virtue, transforming suppressed aspiration into acceptance and coherence.

Quiet readiness for vocational possibility

I am a quick learner. I know all that needs to be known as a farmer from my in-laws. It makes me think I can learn anything, and maybe one day, I can do something different than farming. (Hang) Farming is hard work, you need to know lots of skills, you need to know the land, the weather…it's hard work, so I think if I know how to do hard work, I am prepared and be able to do any other work…in fact, I've been helping out with my cousin's carpentry work (l!am mộc), and I'm good. I won't mind doing it if my family let me… (Hanh) Conforming yet reclaiming – Women maintain outward harmony while inwardly cultivating reflexive readiness, competence, and self-worth, preparing for possible futures beyond farming

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patriarchy fuses women's contribution to the moral order of the family, rendering their productive labor symbolically invisible. While Nga's attachment to the field community sustained her purpose, yet it also reinforced her awareness of her marginalization within her own family. Nga referenced the proverb “Đ!an b!a như hạt mưa sa, hạt rơi xuống giếng, hạt ra ngo!ai đồng” (Women are like raindrops: some fall on palaces, others on rice fields), which captures how social norms naturalize female subordination as moral destiny. The metaphor implies that a woman's place, whether fortunate or burdensome, is not her choice but her fate. For Nga, this saying expressed both resignation and recognition: she knew the value of her work yet also accepted that acknowledgment would remain beyond her reach.

Similarly, Lam found her “family” not in her marital household or family business but among the c”ac chị em (sisters) in the field:

“What I say is valued by my female group (c”ac chị em), they don't ignore or downplay it like my husband…there [within the female community in the field] I feel like I have a voice and I'm respected…it's a place I look forward to go every morning…at home I am just who I am, regardless of what I do, I kind of get used to it to keep things going”

(Lam)

In the field, Lam's knowledge of farming techniques such as nh#an bản (cloning) and reo hạt giống (seeding) was appreciated by her peers: “c”ac chị em value my experience and knowledge about cloning (nh#an bản) and seeding (reo hạt giống)”, she explained. Among fellow women farmers, her expertise was acknowledged and respected, an affirmation rarely experienced within her marital house- hold. However, this recognition did not mean that Lam could freely carry these ideas into practice within the family farm. Rather, the sisters provided an affirming space in which her ideas were heard, discussed, and socially validated, while actual decisions about farming remained subject to the authority of her husband and in-laws. At home, these same contributions were often disregarded, as kinship hierarchies and blurred work–family boundaries amplified gendered biases that render daughters-in-law's labour an “expected duty” rather than valued expertise (Vu, 2022). Within this collective space, she could express and refine her expertise and receive affirmation as competent and knowledgeable, even if she could not fully enact these ideas within the family farm. Thus, the field enabled recognition of Lam's competence, but not necessarily the enactment of her ideas within the family business. Yet, the same experience that affirmed her contribution among peers also magnified her invisibility at home:

“but when I come home to talk ideas like that, I got shut down…the distinction is just too large that c”ac chị em have become my family and my family business is a place to go to be with them…so I try to live in harmony rather than arguing with them everyday about what I have been doing in the field…”

(Lam)

Nga's and Lam's accounts reveal the tension between unification and contribution. Their sense of being valued and vital is anchored in communal sisterhood rather than the patriarchal families to which they are formally bound. They experience affirmation and purpose through reciprocal relations with other c”ac chị em (sisters), yet this very relational fulfillment heightens their awareness of invisibility within their familial hierarchy. The field becomes a site where they can contribute and be recognized, while the home remains a space where they must maintain harmony and unification.

Their navigation of this tension is not a rejection of family life but a process of navigational endurance, a continual effort to sustain meaning and harmony by shifting the locus of recognition without overtly defying social order. By repositioning their sense of value in the field and among peers, they maintain coherence between their obligation to family to maintain harmony and their aspiration for acknowledgment. These experiences reflect broader cultural expectations in rural Vietnam, where women are socialized to embody loyalty, humility, and endurance as moral virtues (Vu, 2007). Such norms position women as compliant daughters-in-law and sup- portive wives whose labour, though vital to family farming, remains culturally invisible. Their contribution is moralized as service rather than achievement. As Phinney (2008) notes, these expectations are deeply embedded in the daughter-in-law's role, ensuring that recognition flows upward within the patriarchal hierarchy rather than toward the women who sustain it.

Female farmers like Nga and Lam therefore inhabit a dual world: one morally ordered by patriarchal duty, and another emotionally sustained through sisterly solidarity. They preserve familial unity through outward conformity while cultivating personal meaning in communal exchange. This dual orientation exemplifies how women reconcile the need to unify with moral expectations and the aspiration to contribute as capable, knowledgeable individuals. Within this navigation, recognition is not institutionally granted but relationally cultivated; meaningfulness is not found in visibility but in the shared endurance of invisibility. Through this enduring navigation, women sustain a sense of value and connection in spaces where formal acknowledgment is often denied.

3.1.2. Enduring yet confining The sisters (c”ac chị em) enabled female farmers to endure the repetitive and inequitable conditions of rural farm life. Being with the

sisters, female farmers developed a sense of collective endurance that generated meaningfulness through shared hardship, mutual care, and collective humour. They could exchange frustrations and share everyday burdens. Yet, this very sense of collective endurance, rooted in solidarity and mutual survival, also reinforced compliance with hierarchical norms, subtly constraining their ability to imagine or pursue alternatives. In this sense, endurance functioned as both a source of strength and a mechanism of confinement. Bong who has lived with her husband's family for nearly 30 years and has three children, remarked that:

I've been with my in-laws for nearly 30 years now, and I always find myself doing more, if not most, of the work, not only around the house but also in our family farming. My husband can just stay at home comfortably because he has the right to. And if we have a successful harvesting year, they congratulate him and not me… I'm too used to this, and so are my buddies (c”ac chị em)…

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Now, I accept it and work for me is about being with ‘c”ac chị em’ where I really see myself as I realize I will just always be the wife, the daughter-in-law who has the duty to work for the family.

(Bong)

Bong's narrative vividly illustrates how collective endurance becomes both empowering and confining. It is through this collective rhythm, working, sharing, and enduring together, that she sustains meaningfulness in her work. Yet, the very endurance that gives her purpose also reinforces acceptance of a familial order that subordinates her agency. Bong's “acceptance” is not passive resignation but a form of navigational endurance, sustaining emotional survival under constraint. Through collective endurance, she finds meaning- fulness through shared hardship, even as this adaptation reproduces the patriarchal norms that confine her. Being with sisters becomes the space where she can contribute emotionally and socially, yet it also becomes the emotional anchor that keeps her tied to the same inequitable system she endures. Similarly, Le shared how decision-making over key aspects of the family's agricultural business such as contracts, production, and resource use, remains the work and are being monopolized by men:

The men (husbands or father-in-law) are the ones who decide on contracting with buyers for our harvest seasons…they are the ones who decide everything about how we farm and what products we use in farming…I'm just doing what they are telling me to do because this is a norm here…we are all like that here [groups of c”ac chị em] in the field, that's why we are part of each other and of this field, but not part of the in-law's family business.

(Le)

Le's sharing reflects a deeply internalized acceptance of patriarchal authority. For Le, collective endurance becomes the condition for survival and social belonging: “we are part of each other”, but at the cost of reinforcing patriarchal continuity. Le's endurance shows how she preserves harmony by conforming, while finding purpose in sustaining others who share her fate. Her “part of each other” becomes a collective survival mechanism. For Le, unification represents collective endurance, an alignment that preserves familial harmony and obligation, while her contribution is suppressed. Her compliance: “I'm just doing what they are telling me to do because this is a norm here”, is not about obedience but a culturally reinforced act of moral alignment. In the Confucian moral order that underpins rural Vietnam, a woman's virtue and respectability are tied to how well she upholds domestic order and avoids conflict. By following her husband's and father-in-law's authority, Le fulfills the moral principles of hiếu (filial piety) and h!oa (harmony), which emphasize relational stability over individual assertion. These virtues elevate endurance as markers of moral worth, positioning women's sub- mission not as weakness but a strength. Yet, this endurance that legitimizes Le's virtue also confines her capacity for autonomy and recognition. Ngan's account explains the normalization of endurance as a culturally inherited confinement:

It brings me peace in the farming work that I do every day because we all share the same experience. I've never seen anyone in the village who left farming to pursue other types of work, that's just how we were raised…we continue to do what we are supposed to do…

(Ngan)

Ngan's words illustrate how collective endurance becomes culturally inherited, passed down as a moral expectation of womanhood. Farming becomes a moral vocation, an unquestioned continuation of duty framed as tradition. The collective “we” in her account naturalizes endurance as virtue. However, such collective endurance while offers and sustains psychological stability, it also confines possibilities of change. Ngan's peace is produced through shared and mutual understanding, as part of being a “good” daughter-in-law. Her narrative thus reflects how contribution is redefined not as recognition, but as the capacity to endure.

The findings illustrate that for female farmers, meaningful work is not defined by transformation or achievement but by enduring navigation within constraining social orders. Endurance emerges as both a moral strength and a social confinement, a virtue that sustains self-worth while reinforcing dependence. Within this dynamic, unification reflects the moral duty to uphold harmony as a “good” wife and daughter-in-law through collective endurance, while contribution is suppressed along the way. Rather than resolving these tensions, the female farmers navigate between them, transforming endurance into a moral and relational practice that gives meaning to persistence, care, and solidarity. Working alongside the sisters, they sustain emotional survival through shared hardship and mutual affirmation. However, this collective endurance, while providing moral sustenance, also confines them within the very hierarchies that limit their visibility and agency. Endurance thus becomes both a moral resource and a mechanism of constraint, preserving social order while restricting change. Female farmers find meaningfulness not by escaping constraint but by enduring within it, crafting coherence and value through the navigation of cultural duty and recognition. This reveals a navigational perspective of meaningful work, a moral balancing act of sustaining harmony while living within its limits, where endurance itself becomes both the condition for, and the cost of, meaningfulness.

3.1.3. Conforming yet reclaiming While endurance confined women within patriarchal structures, it also nurtured a subtle awakening, an emerging awareness of self

and agency within conformity. In this phase, female farmers continue to endure, yet their endurance becomes more reflexive, conscious, and reclaiming. They maintain harmony through outward conformity (unification) but quietly reclaim meaning and agency through inner awareness and relational solidarity (contribution). For instance, An, shared that:

I do everything right, cooking, farming, taking care of my in-laws, the kids, my husband, but you know, it's never enough. They will always say I need to do this and that better…even in farming, when I work really hard from early mornings, they still think

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I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do, but I'm used to that…I don't really take it to heart anymore because in reality I do keep everything running in the family, they don't see it, it's fine, but we [the sisters] all know, and we laugh about it…

(An)

An's reflection captures a more reflexive and conscience-based mode of endurance. Her statement: “I do everything right… but it's never enough”, exposes an internalized awareness of how moral expectations of hiếu (filial duty) and h!oa (harmony) sustain inequality under the guise of virtue. Yet unlike earlier accounts of silent endurance, she no longer seeks recognition from her in-laws; instead, her sense of meaningfulness shifts inward, toward self-recognition and collective knowing. When she says, “they don't see it, it's fine, but we all know” she articulates a conscience that sees through the injustice without breaking social order. This transforms conformity into a reflective act. An's conscience allows her to live within Confucian ideals of harmony while subtly resisting their hold over her sense of worth. Her laughter with the sisters signifies not resignation but a shared knowing, a recognition that what sustains the family is their unseen labour and emotional strength. Through this quiet awareness, endurance shifts from mere survival to their value in a social context that rarely acknowledges either.

Similarly, Tam reinterpreted the proverb “l#a!ấy chồng theo phúc nh!a chồng” (once married, a woman's blessings flow from her husband's family) not as a source of destiny but as an excuse to take female farmers (wives and daughters-in-law) for granted under the moral guise of being a “good” woman:

As a daughter-in-law there are always expectations for me to live up to the norm that ‘l#a!ấy chồng theo phúc nh!a chồng’ (once getting married, the women's blessings will come from the husband's family) so everything I do will be counted into how much blessing I will get, including being good at farming and taking care of the family…it's however an excuse for taking us [groups of c”ac chị em] for granted…that's why we grow closer to each other here in the field but not with our in-laws because no matter what we do to voice our right in the family business, they will say it's for your children's blessing and for you own sake.

(Tam)

The proverb “l#a!ấy chồng theo phúc nh!a chồng” traditionally affirms that a woman's blessings and moral worth are tied to her husband's family. Yet Tam's reinterpretation, calling it “an excuse for taking us for granted”, shows a shift from acceptance to critical discernment. She does not reject her role as a daughter-in-law; instead, she exposes how virtue is co-opted by patriarchal norms to mask inequality. Her awareness transforms conformity into conscience-based resistance. By recognizing the moral double bind in which her loyalty is reframed as self-interest (“everything I do will be counted into how much blessing I will get”), Tam reclaims interpretive power over what these values mean. It is also through these very obligations and cultural norms that female farmers quietly grew closer to one another. While she outwardly conformed to the expectations of hiếu (filial duty) and h!oa (harmony), she inwardly exercises a moral redefinition of worth, aligning with Unification in action but reclaiming Contribution in meaning. Her reflection exposes the tension between unification, which demands alignment with family ideals to preserve legitimacy, and recognition, the desire to have her contributions valued rather than taken for granted as natural duty. Within this dynamic, Tam's conformity becomes reflexive rather than passive, a means of preserving moral coherence while quietly questioning the fairness of the system. Tam maintains harmony outwardly while reclaiming interpretive power and agency within.

An's and Tam's experiences differ from the enduring yet confining dynamic described above. In that form of endurance, women found purpose through persistence, care, and collective solidarity, yet their endurance ultimately reinforced the hierarchies that confined them. Within the conformity yet reclaiming dynamic, however, endurance evolves into reclamation: a quiet yet deliberate reworking of meaning from within the confines of patriarchal order. In these accounts, conformity is not dismantled but re-signified. Female farmers like An and Tam sustain coherence through Unification while reclaiming agency and self-worth through Contribution. Their reflections transform endurance into conscience, revealing meaningful work not as compliance but as a process of moral navigation, sustaining harmony outwardly while inwardly reclaiming one's own moral narrative. In this confining yet reclaiming dynamic, meaningful work emerges as the moral reinterpretation of duty.

3.2. The tensional dynamics shaping female farmers' vocational choice

The enduring tension between Unification and Contribution not only shapes how female farmers construct meaningfulness in their daily work but also determines their vocational choices across life. Their decisions about farming are rarely expressions of preference or self-realization; rather, they emerge through ongoing negotiation with deeply embedded cultural norms and gendered obligations. The data revealed three interrelated dynamics above, through which different tensions of endurance shape the vocational trajectories of female farmers. These dynamics are elaborated in the sections below.

3.2.1. Normalization of farming as duty Female farmers' enduring attachment to farming stems from the cultural fusion of womanhood and familial duty. The saying “l#a!ấy

chồng theo phúc nh!a chồng” (a woman's blessings flow from her husband's family) encapsulates how marriage and labour merge into a moral script that defines a woman's worth through her contribution to the husband's lineage. Within this framework, farming is not perceived as a profession or choice but as an inherited moral pathway through which women sustain familial harmony and social legitimacy.

This fusion embeds the vital yet invisible tensional dynamic, as women's agricultural labour remains vital as it sustains both the family's livelihood and its moral standing within the community. Yet it also remains invisible because its value is considered a duty and a women's virtue rather than recognized. Their contribution is absorbed into the collective good of phúc (blessing), where the worth of

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work is measured not by individual achievement but by its capacity to maintain familial order. This invisibility is not accidental but structural: by framing farming as a duty and virtue, the patriarchal family system ensures continuity while masking inequality. Ngan captured this normalization of farming as a taken-for-granted life trajectory:

It brings me peace in the farming work that I do every day because we all share the same experience. I've never seen anyone in the village who left farming to pursue other types of work, that's just how we were raised.

(Ngan)

For female farmers like Ngan, endurance takes the form of cultural continuity, adhering to “how we were raised” becomes both a duty and a vocational inevitability. The peace she describes reflects moral coherence: by aligning her daily actions with inherited expectations, she preserves family harmony and her own legitimacy as a dutiful wife and daughter-in-law. This reveals a tensional navigation between unification and contribution. To unify means to preserve harmony and fulfill the ideal of the good wife, embodying hiếu (filial duty) and h!oa (harmony) that link feminine virtue to the maintenance of domestic and social stability. To contribute, however, means to perceive one's actions as significant and in service of something greater than the self, to find meaningfulness through doing. For Ngan, this contribution is expressed through collective endurance and shared care. Her peace emerges from the sense that her labour sustains others and reinforces the foundation of the family. Contribution here is profoundly relational and dutiful; it is experienced as service to a larger social whole rather than as an act of individual self-realization, reflecting how meaningfulness arises through moral participation rather than personal distinction.

Yet unification and contribution coexist in contradiction. Contribution is only meaningful insofar as it reinforces unification, and unification is maintained through the suppression of individual aspiration. Ngan's reflection thus embodies the vital yet invisible dynamic of women's work. The collective “we all share the same experience” not only affirms solidarity but also signals conformity, shared endurance becomes both a source of connection and a mechanism of social regulation. In this sense, meaningful work for female farmers is not an outcome of transformation or autonomy but an act of navigation, a continual balancing of coherence within constraint. Farming becomes the site where unification and contribution collapse into one another with sustaining harmony becomes a form of meaningfulness. Vocational choice, therefore, is not driven by personal preference or ambition but by a deeply embodied ethic of service and duty. Farming becomes the space where women cultivate both crops and virtue, enduring as they preserve the social order that simultaneously legitimizes and confines them.

3.2.2. Suppression of alternative aspirations Although some female farmers envisioned alternative livelihoods, their aspirations were gradually absorbed into domestic and

familial expectations. This process reflects the enduring yet confining dynamic outlined in the previous section, in which endurance is mobilized to preserve familial duty while simultaneously suppressing aspirations for self-aspired work. Female farmers' hopes for alternative futures, such as tailoring, trading, or running small enterprises, are gradually reinterpreted as deviations from virtue of being a good wife or daughter-in-law. These aspirations are then reabsorbed into the moral framework of familial duty, where adherence to gendered expectations for work within the family is celebrated as virtue, and any deviation as a lack of virtue. Duong shared this experience:

I used to think about opening a tailoring and mending shop (tiệm may v”a) in the village, but everyone said that's what wives do, and that nobody would come to the shop. After I got married, it became my duty to mend clothes for family members [in-laws]. I found myself back in the field, and gradually I got used to it and forgot what I originally wanted. Now, my daily routine involves going to the field and meeting the sisters, and I've come to enjoy it. I don't think about work in the same way anymore; it's all part of who I am and what I signed up for when I got married.

(Duong)

Duong's experience reflects how aspiration gradually becomes transfigured into obligation through enduring within moral and familial constraints. The act of forgetting “what I originally wanted” reveals how ambition is morally recoded as filial service. Endur- ance, in this context, preserves coherence by enabling Duong to sustain meaningfulness through fulfilling familial duties, yet in doing so, it also confines her sense of possibility. For Duong and others, contribution becomes reinterpreted through service rather than self- realization. Their labour retains moral worth only insofar as it reinforces family continuity. The cultural expectation to contribute to the family's prosperity transforms potential ambition into dutiful maintenance, rendering aspiration morally suspect when directed toward personal fulfillment. This reframing binds women to a cycle where meaningfulness is sustained by endurance rather than agency. As a result, endurance becomes both a moral compass and a mechanism of suppression: it preserves family coherence while narrowing women's capacity to imagine alternatives. Vocational continuity thus reflects not limited imagination but a deeply inter- nalized alignment with duty and culture, where aspiration beyond duty risks unsettling the very harmony on which one's worth depends.

3.2.3. Quiet readiness for vocational possibility Although female farmers' work remains shaped by structural constraint, endurance also enables new forms of readiness for

vocational possibility. Farming, while rooted in duty, becomes a site where female farmers cultivate patience, resilience, and relational competence, skills that can quietly prepare them for potential futures beyond farming. It is through endurance that subtle vocational awakening is found. Vy shared that:

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Even though this [farming] is what we do now everyday, it doesn't mean it's all we can do. When times are hard, I know I can still manage, whether it's in farming or something else. We [the sisters and I] help each other learn small things, selling vegetables, fixing tools, so we don't fall behind.

(Vy)

Vy's reflection demonstrates a subtle shift from endurance as mere survival to endurance as readiness. Her statement “it doesn't mean it's all we can do” quietly challenges the idea that farming is both the duty and destiny of women. The collective learning with the sisters in “selling vegetables, fixing tools” reflects an emergent vocational consciousness rooted in collective endurance leading to adaptability. Within this conforming yet reclaiming dynamic, Vy continues to fulfill her familial obligations “this is what we do now every day”, the imperative of unification that legitimizes Vy and other female farmers as a dutiful wife, yet, simultaneously, her collaboration with the sisters redefines contribution: it expands into collective learning and quiet preparation for alternative futures. The learning she de- scribes is not overt resistance but a quiet reclamation of agency: transforming the repetitive rhythm of farm work into a moral apprenticeship that nurtures both resilience and vocational imagination. Farming becomes not only a means of sustaining the family but a foundation for adaptability and future possibility. Similarly, Minh's narrative marks a further evolution of reflexive endurance:

I used to think this [farming] is the only work I'll ever do and I don't mind it to be honest, because it is for the family…but it could help me if I ever want to do something else like running a small food stall or teaching others how to grow things because I have the patience, I'm good with people, and I know the land well… The sisters often say to me that ‘You're good at this, you could teach others’ and that makes me feel so good…I feel like I can always build something or do something different if the chance comes.

(Minh)

Minh's initial acceptance “I don't mind because it's for the family” affirms unification with expectations of service and filial duty. Yet her realization “it could also help me if I ever want to do something else” signals a reclamation of agency. By recognizing the transferability of her skills, such as patience, people skills, and knowledge the land, Minh reinterprets endurance as preparation rather than a full confinement to the work she is doing. Encouragement from her sisters “You're good at this, you could teach others” further reinforces this emergent sense of self-worth, repositioning contribution as capability rather than mere compliance. These accounts reflect contingent possibilities that participants imagined might become viable if future circumstances changed.

In these quiet reorientations of both Vy and Minh, meaningful work emerges not from transformation or escape, but from an expanded consciousness within continuity. Vy's and Minh's narratives show how endurance, when shared and reflected upon, evolves into readiness for vocational change without undermining familial harmony, the essence of conforming yet reclaiming. Their endurance shifts from passive tolerance to reflexive preparedness, sustaining meaningfulness while cultivating confidence and adaptability. This reconstituted readiness reveals meaningful work as an evolving moral negotiation between duty and aspiration, where coherence, competence, and hope are cultivated within, rather than beyond, constraint. It is also noteworthy that both Vy and Minh were relatively new daughters-in-law, with 7 and 3 years of marriage, respectively. Their shorter marital tenure meant they were still navigating the early stages of adjustment to their in-laws' households. At the same time, their relative newness also made them more attuned to quiet readiness for vocational possibility, as their hopes for alternative futures remained vivid and less subsumed by the long-term normalization of endurance seen among older participants.

4. Discussion

4.1. Theoretical contributions and implications

This study introduces and conceptualizes an enduring navigational approach to meaningful work, extending existing tensional perspectives (Mitra & Buzzanell, 2017; Vu & Fan, 2025) by demonstrating that meaningfulness is not achieved through resolution but sustained through enduring navigation between moral obligation and personal vocational aspiration (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 illustrates how the pathways of Unification (connection, duty, harmony) and Contribution (purpose, impact, significance) constitute the experience of meaningful work and remain in constant tension, giving rise to three interrelated tensional dynamics: vital yet invisible, enduring yet confining, and conforming yet reclaiming. Through this ongoing tensional and relational negotiation, individuals sustain coherence and meaningfulness under constraint. These dynamics, in turn, shape distinct vocational orientations: the normalization of work as duty, the suppression of alternative aspirations, and a quiet readiness for vocational possibility. The study con- ceptualizes meaningful work as a lived, recursive process through which the women in our study navigate obligation and aspiration within patriarchal and collectivist structures.

This approach foregrounds the relational and tensional labour involved in sustaining purpose within constraint. Through this lens, the pathways of Unification and Contribution (Rosso et al., 2010) are dynamically interwoven. Unification anchors individuals in relationships and the obligations arising from them, while Contribution reflects the desire to make a valued impact and to be recognized as capable and worthy. Individuals sustain a sense of meaningfulness through continuous endurance, living and working within contradictions that cannot be resolved but must be endured and reinterpreted. This process unfolds through what we term enduring navigation, a form of moral practice through which individuals continually seek and navigate coherence and purpose amid social, cultural, and structural constraint. We identify three interrelated dynamics that constitute this process.

First, essential yet invisible, captures how work that sustains family and community life becomes morally valued but socially un- recognized. A sense of meaningful work arises not from visibility or achievement but from the moral continuity of care and service

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Fig. 1. Navigating between contribution and unification in the constitution of meaningful work and its impact on vocational choice.

M .C. Vu et al.

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reframed as duty. Second, sustaining yet entrapping, reveals how endurance itself functions as both a moral resource that preserves coherence and solidarity and a constraint that suppresses individual aspiration. In this dynamic, adaptation replaces advancement, as persistence is reinterpreted as virtue. Third, harmonizing yet resisting, marks a reflexive evolution of endurance in which individuals outwardly preserve harmony while inwardly reclaiming agency. Through solidarity and mutual recognition, such as the shared hu- mour and collective care, individuals transform endurance into readiness, cultivating quiet preparedness for alternative futures. These dynamics illustrate that recognition (Sayer, 2011; Yeoman, 2014) in constrained contexts is not externally granted but formed rela- tionally through shared awareness, solidarity, and care. While the invisibilization of women's labour is a broader phenomenon across many contexts, our findings show that, in patrilocal family farming, even women's economically productive agricultural labour may be taken for granted as part of women's expected duty and therefore remain unrecognized as expertise, authority, or legitimate contribution.

This enduring navigational approach also provides new insight into how moral endurance shapes vocational choices (Kantamneni & Fouad, 2023). For female farmers, work is rarely the outcome of individual agency but the product of sustained negotiation across competing moral demands. This negotiation produces three interrelated orientations toward work: the normalization of farming as duty, where labour is internalized as moral virtue rather than vocational choice; the suppression of alternative aspirations, where hopes for other vocational choices are reabsorbed into familial obligations; and a quiet readiness for vocational possibility, where endurance cultivates skills, confidence, and moral awareness that may support future vocational possibilities. Vocational continuity in such contexts, therefore, should not be read as a failure of imagination but as a moral strategy for coherence, through which individuals sustain a sense of meaningfulness under enduring constraint and within the situational limits shaping their work choices (Duffy et al., 2016; Kantamneni & Fouad, 2023). By reframing endurance as a mode of navigation rather than submission, this study shows how individuals sustain coherence and quiet readiness within boundaries that appear immovable.

In this view, endurance is not mere coping or compliance, but a moral and relational form of agency through which individuals sustain coherence, preserve harmony, and keep purpose and possibility alive within structures that both confer and restrict recognition (Sayer, 2011; Yeoman, 2014). For female farmers in Northern Vietnam, this endurance is shaped by patriarchal and collectivist hi- erarchies of gender, kinship, and filial duty, through which they maintain familial harmony while quietly negotiating recognition and self-worth. In this way, the study extends Rosso et al.'s (2010) framework by showing that Unification and Contribution are not necessarily complementary but can become tensional: the demand to unify may suppress one's capacity to contribute as an autono- mous agent. Meaningfulness is therefore sustained not by escaping constraint, but through its ongoing moral and relational negoti- ation, as individuals cultivate provisional coherence, preserve moral continuity, and exercise reflexive endurance. Connecting our findings to broader research on meaningful work under conditions of constraint and tension (Mitra & Buzzanell, 2017; Vu & Fan, 2025), we show that meaningful work is sustained through the moral negotiation of endurance and purpose rather than through autonomy or transformation, revealing how individuals preserve coherence and moral worth, while inhabiting persistent asymmetries of power and recognition.

4.2. Practical implications

In practical terms, our study highlights the need to address the systemic marginalization of female farmers in patriarchal contexts such as Northern Vietnam, where women's contributions remain underrecognized and their agency and vocational choices are con- strained by social and cultural norms. The practical challenge is therefore not simply to strengthen women's capacity to endure these conditions, but to transform the familial, community, and institutional arrangements that make such endurance necessary. Supporting female farmers therefore requires interventions at familial, community, and institutional levels. Within families, awareness initiatives directed at husbands and in-laws may help challenge norms that devalue women's labour, but awareness alone is unlikely to alter entrenched inequalities. Such initiatives should be accompanied by measures that strengthen women's participation in household decisions concerning land, income, investment, and vocational futures. At the community level, women's agricultural cooperatives and associations can provide spaces for skill-sharing, advocacy, and mutual support, enhancing women's visibility and agency (Ha et al., 2017). Their value lies not only in supporting individual women, but also in converting dispersed experiences of under-recognition into collective voice and bargaining power. At the institutional level, government agencies and NGOs can expand access to education, technical training, financial resources, and mentorship, thereby strengthening women's vocational skills and decision-making ca- pacity. Measures such as microfinance and gender-sensitive agricultural extension programs may also reduce women's dependence on in-laws while framing their participation as beneficial to household well-being and farm productivity (FAO, 2011; UN Women, ADB, & ILO, 2021). However, such measures should be assessed according to whether they increase women's control over resources and occupational decisions, rather than merely adding financial or productive responsibilities to their existing workloads. Such in- terventions must remain culturally sensitive, recognizing that women navigate tensions between fulfilling social obligations and pursuing purposeful impact.

Importantly, these insights extend beyond agriculture. The tensional dynamics identified in this study (between Unification and Contribution) also resonate with women's experiences in other patriarchal and male-dominated occupations, such as construction, engineering, and aviation, where ideas are often dismissed and recognition remains uneven (Wilson & VanAntwerp, 2021). For instance, female engineers report “not-just-being, but [be-]longing” (Bell, 1999) through peer solidarity that fosters Unification, yet this very alignment can reproduce exclusion from formal spaces of Contribution, such as decision-making and recognition (Hatmaker, 2013). The broader relevance of our findings therefore lies not in assuming that women encounter identical conditions across occu- pations, but in identifying a recurring tension: the relationships that provide belonging, legitimacy, and support may simultaneously constrain voice, autonomy, and recognized contribution. Although our study is grounded in Northern Vietnam, the enduring

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navigational dynamics identified may also illuminate work in other collectivist settings where family harmony, in-group obligation, and social legitimacy strongly shape occupational life, such as women's entrepreneurship in collective societies such as the United Arab Emirates, or community- or Corporate Social Responsibility-oriented roles in Asian contexts (Ng et al., 2022; Vu & Shin, 2025). Across these settings, a navigational lens can help practitioners identify when belonging enables meaningful contribution, when it becomes conditional on conformity, and how organizational arrangements might sustain relational connection without suppressing agency and recognition.

4.3. Limitations and avenues for future research

This study's findings are contextually grounded in Northern Vietnam's agrarian and patriarchal setting, and while they offer rich insight, they may not fully generalize to other socio-cultural contexts. Future research could extend this inquiry by examining other marginalized populations, such as migrant workers, craftswomen, and care laborers, who similarly navigate moral and relational tensions in their work. Further studies could also adopt an intersectional lens, exploring how religion, age, socioeconomic status, and cultural heritage intersect to shape individuals' experiences of meaningful work and vocational choice.

Building on this study's interpretive depth, follow-up studies could integrate standardized measures (e.g., job satisfaction, work–life balance) to assess the broader applicability of the identified dynamics, specifically, how the interplay between Unification (moral obligation) and Contribution (purposeful impact) shapes experiences of meaningful work across different contexts. Cross-cultural comparative research could also illuminate how collectivist and individualist moral orders differently structure the interplay be- tween Unification and Contribution, revealing different moral and relational foundations through which meaningful work is sustained.

In addition, exploring temporal and intergenerational perspectives may uncover how endurance and moral obligation are trans- mitted, adapted, or resisted across generations of women. One promising avenue would be to examine how women's transition from daughters-in-law to mothers-in-law reshapes their relationship to recognition, authority, and duty, including whether they reproduce, soften, or challenge the gendered expectations they once endured within this specific context and in other patriarchal family-based work settings. Another would be to explore whether and when the quiet readiness observed in our findings later becomes actual vocational transition, and how such transitions are shaped by changing family roles, household authority, and life-course circum- stances. Studies could also explore how women in constrained work contexts experience the interview process itself, including whether reflecting on work and family obligations generates affirmation, discomfort, or heightened awareness, and how these responses shape what can be voiced about meaningful work. Relatedly, scholars could examine how cultural schemas (Williams et al., 2013) shape what is recognized as legitimate contribution, appropriate womanhood, and imaginable vocational possibility for women in patrilocal family farming contexts, and how these schemas sustain or constrain women's work experiences and aspirations. These lines of inquiry would advance a broader, pluralistic understanding of meaningful work that integrates cultural, structural, and psychological dy- namics, while critically examining how power relations both constrain and enable the pursuit of meaningfulness in work.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mai Chi Vu: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization, Project administration, Validation, Visualization. Diep Nguyen: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft. Stephen Teo: Writing – original draft. Nicholas Burton: Writing – original draft.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest related to this work.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2026.104279.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

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