RT Journal Article
T1 Opting out and opting in : understanding the complexities of women's career transitions
A1 Cabrera, Elizabeth F.
AB Purpose This study aims to explore the reasons why women are leaving the workplace. Are theyopting out of the workforce to stay at home with their children as current media reports suggest, or arethe reasons more complex as the Kaleidoscope Career Model (KCM) suggests? A second objective is toexamine whether or not women’s primary career motives change over time as predicted by the KCM.Lastly, the potential barriers or boundaries faced by women pursuing boundaryless careers will beidentified.Design/methodology/approach A survey was sent to 2,000 randomly selected women graduatesof an international business school located in the USA. The response rate was 25 percent, or 497women.Findings The results revealed that 47 percent of the women surveyed had stopped working atsome point in their career. Numerous reasons were cited for leaving. Only 35 percent of the womenwho stopped working cited rearing children as their sole reason for opting out. Sixty two percent of thewomen reported that their career focus had changed. In line with the KCM predictions, mid careerwomen were most interested in finding balance in their lives and the desire for authenticity increasedacross the lifespan. Finally, 70 percent of the women who left eventually returned to work, debunkingthe myth that women opt out and do not return to the workforce. Our findings show that there arebarriers that make it difficult to move across organizations, especially if time is taken off between jobs.Research limitations/implications All of the respondents in this study have a graduate degreein international business; thus, the results may have limited generalizability to other populations.Nonetheless, this study provides valuable data that helps us to better understand the complexities ofwomen’s career paths.Originality/value This study makes contributions to two different areas of career theory. First, itprovides one of the first empirical tests of the KCM. In addition to showing that women are leavingcompanies for more complex reasons than for family reasons alone, it also shows that women’sprimary career motives shift over time in the manner predicted by the KCM. Second, the studycontributes to the literature on boundaryless careers by showing that there are in fact barriers orboundaries faced by women attempting to pursue careers across organizations
PB Emerald
SN 1362-0436
YR 2007
FD 2007
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10016/11270
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10016/11270
LA eng
DS e-Archivo
RD 28 abr. 2024