Interesting is a good way of describing Dr. Dulini Fernando (33), Associate Professor, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. This chatty personality is passionate to the core about the work she does while also balancing her roles as a wife and mother.

Dulini’ s primary education was in Sri Lanka at St. Bridget’s Convent. While she was still in school, she followed a crash course for her London O’Levels and A’Levels and at the age of 16 plus, she entered university where she read for two undergraduate degrees - Finance at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Operational Research at the University of Lancaster. Having studied Math for her A’Levels, she realised that she had a knack for quantitative studies and thought she would get into investment banking.

She met her husband Nishan Wirasinha, while on holiday in Sri Lanka and a year later, just after her 21st birthday, they tied the knot. Dulini went on to get a part scholarship at LSE for her Masters in Operational Research and Finance at which time she discovered she was pregnant with her first child, Niketh (10). Nithini (9) and Dharani (8) were to follow and three years later mischievous little Dhaham (5) came along. “Since I was an only child, I always wanted to have a big family,” she explains adding that if not for Nishan’s support in which both parents took a 50 per cent share of their parental responsibilities, it would not have been easy for her to achieve her targets in university and at work.  “My motto is to, ‘Live and let live and take it as it comes’ and I am not a perfectionist,” therefore she says that she is able to balance her busy work life with her family life.

“I would find myself walking into seminars at LSE and realised I liked to teach,” she said. Nishan and Dulini returned to Sri Lanka for a few years at which point she taught at the American National College (ANC), Royal Institute and Informatics Institute of Technology.

Dulini returned to the UK and was granted a full scholarship from the University of Loughborough for her PhD, which included a stipend for her entire family. Having read extensively on the subject of sociology, coupled with her analytical skills resulted in her focussing on Organisational Behaviour specialising in professional careers. “I did a lot of reading on sociology and understood that we are significantly shaped by a social world and therefore have to navigate this world in order to reach our goals. It is also notable that we influence this world in the process,” she explains.

After her PhD, Dulini focused on further developing her interests on professional careers at Warwick Business School. A significant strand of her research centres on highly skilled women workers. While working on this area of study, she developed a concept called Respectable Femininity which she explains comprises ideological notions of good behaviour for women, which significantly conflicts with career development and therefore contributes towards women’s under-representation in top positions.

In recent studies of professional women in the public and private sector in Sri Lanka and of women in the fields of science and engineering in the UK, Dulini and her colleagues have discovered that women conform to certain norms, which they feel construe as respectable behaviour. “The women we interviewed articulated themselves as ‘culturally appropriate’ yet ‘modern’, exercising just the ‘right’ amount of freedom, conforming to ‘appropriate’ sexual behaviours and striking a balance between work and family,” she explains adding, “They maintained a respectable emotional and physical distance with male colleagues, selectively socialised with male clients, came halfway through late night after-hours social events and constructed themselves as good mothers, emphasising their family responsibilities. Demonstrating good behaviour in these terms was seen as vital for winning respect from colleagues and superiors. We however found that respectable behaviour (in these terms) has the potential to negatively impact on women’s career agency : in particular their capacity to network and engage in influencing behaviours,” she adds. The research that Dulini has conducted has been with colleagues from Nottingham University and Birmingham University.

By Natasha Fernandopulle
Photographs by Kanishke Ganewatte