Women's Career Development Throughout the Lifespan

An international exploration

Jenny Bimrose, Mary McMahon, Mark Watson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415816779
• eBook ISBN: 9781135068776
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Women's careers have been a topic of research and discussion in many disciplines including sociology, business, industrial, organisational and vocational psychology, and career guidance. Despite the introduction of equal employment legislation in many countries, women's patterns of career development continue to reflect structural labour market disadvantage.

This unique book brings together expert contributions from academic researchers, as well as representing the voices of older women who participated in an international research investigation. Grounded in multidisciplinary empirical studies, the book provides:

• a variety of perspectives on women's careers in the 21st century
• an international exploration of the voice of the older woman
• an understanding of both the challenges and responses to women as they construct their careers.

Offering a comprehensive understanding of women's career development throughout the lifespan, this book will be of key interest to academics and researchers from the fields of education, psychology, management, geography, labour market economics and sociology, as well as career practitioners, managers, trainers, researchers and policy developers.

1
Introduction

Jenny Bimrose, Mary McMahon and Mark Watson

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), written in the wake of the catastrophically destructive impact of the Second World War (1939–45) states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (United Nations UDHR 1948). According to this Declaration, gender equality is a basic human right. Yet the majority of the world’s poor are women and their lack of access to financial resources has a profound effect on their overall wellbeing. Gender inequality is deeply entrenched in all societies (United Nations 2010). There is no shortage of data that relate to the persistently unequal and disadvantaged position of women, compared with men, in societies across the world. The Global Gender Gap Index, for example, introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006, quantifies the magnitude of gender-based disparities, tracking progress across four key areas: economic, political, education and health (World Economic Forum 2013). Similarly, statistical indicators provided by the United Nations in reports, databases and archives similarly testify to continuing gender discrimination, inequality and injustice (United Nations Women’s Watch 2014).

These data objectify global gender inequality. Invaluable for understanding the sheer scale, pervasiveness and persistence of the problem, the existence of these data sometimes masks an important subjective dimension. Gender is essentially a social construct. It refers to the membership of a particular social category, masculine or feminine, that aligns more or less to the two sexes. It is different from biological sex, sexual orientation, sexual preference and to other categories or descriptions that relate to various behaviours and identities associated with the sexes (Bimrose 2008, 2012). Gender is defined by reference to those attributes associated with being female and being male (Gilligan 1982). These attributes are fluid, not fixed. They differ between cultures or societies, across different periods in history and change within the same culture or society over time. Such changes are bound up with subtle changes in societal role expectations. Consider, for example, the social expectations and values associated with the role of mothers over the past two or three decades, which have changed dramatically in many societies. In many countries, it is now socially acceptable for women with primary responsibility for young children to be in paid employment in the formal economy, alongside their caring responsibilities, in a way that was not previously the case. In fact, the values and expectations associated with this social role have shifted so dramatically in some societies that dual wage earners (i.e. where both the man and woman in the family earn a wage or salary through formal employment) have become the norm, because of the economic necessity for women in a family to make a financial contribution, alongside men (Paden and Buehler 1995).

Intersections of social disadvantage

The fluidity of these gender role expectations illustrates not only the ways in which gender is constructed and defined by different societies over time. It also highlights how ways in which being male and being female are valued differently – different and not equal. For example, despite women’s increased participation in the labour market, little change has occurred in the gendered allocation of domestic duties. Women, on average, continue to take the primary responsibility for domestic and care responsibilities, with studies showing how men’s share of domestic labour has actually slowed down or remained the same in some Western countries (Bimrose 2008). The intensification of work, characterised by, for example, long and unpredictable working hours and/or work outside formally contracted hours, has had a particularly negative impact on women shouldering the main responsibility for housework and caring who are consequently forced to develop various coping strategies to help manage the dual demands and stresses of paid employment and domestic duties (Bimrose 2008).

It is also clear that while the term gender relates to a single social variable, in reality it is often associated with multidimensional disadvantage. Other biological, social and cultural categories, like race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, age and other axes of social identity interact, often simultaneously and at different levels, thus contributing to systematic injustice and social inequality. The term intersectionality is useful to our understanding of the complexity of the layers of disadvantage that are often evident in this context (Begum 1994). It refers to the interaction of different types of social oppression and injustice in ways that create multiple manifestations of discrimination (Crenshaw 1991). Despite certain flaws (Davis 2008; Ludvig 2006; Yuval-Davis 2006), intersectionality usefully emphasises the combined impact on an individual of the convergence of factors like gender and age, together with other factors such as race and socio-economic status (Bradley 1996; Moore 2009).

The negative impact on individuals of the interplay of various social factors is being increasingly recognised (Ainsworth 2002; Weller 2007). Where gender and age converge, for example, it has been found that structural factors not only determine the basis on which older women join the labour market (Buchmann et al. 2010; Dex et al. 2008), but they also influence employment destinations (Moore 2009). Additionally, it increases vulnerability to unemployment. In the UK, for example, unemployment ‘amongst women aged 50–64 has increased by 41 per cent, compared with one per cent overall’ (The Commission on Older Women 2013: 3). Social disadvantage associated with ageing has become a particularly critical issue in countries around the world experiencing increased life expectancy and falling birth rates contiguously through a combination of improved health care and living standards (Del Bono et al. 2007; Roberts 2006; Smeaton and Vegeris 2009). Labour market penalties associated with ageing, like vulnerability to redundancy, forced early retirement and minimum wages (Sussman and Tabi 2004; Taylor and Walker 1997) have been found to interact with gender inequality in a pernicious manner (United Nations 2010). Compared with older men, economic resources are unequally distributed among older women (Del Bono et al. 2007).

Despite the need to extend working lives (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2006) and with the economic costs associated with the under-utilisation of female labour being a recurrent theme (e.g. International Labour Office 2010), research into how women’s career transitions into and through the labour market could be supported effectively is scant (Bimrose 2001). A detailed understanding of the formal career support needs of older people is also lacking (Ford 2005). Age related, gendered labour market discrimination should be a particular concern for those providing formal career guidance and counselling services, since the consistent failure of women to sustain continuous employment can lead to an impoverished old age, which may also be characterised by social exclusion and reduced quality of life (Smeaton and Vegeris 2009). Commentaries relating to the formal support required to facilitate women’s career progression (including older women) have tended to reflect traditional and mainly psychological career theories, developed in relatively homogenous Western capitalist contexts that were strongly individualised, masculine, secular, action- and future-focused (Bimrose 2001, 2008). Such theories have largely failed to address the complex contextual and relational nature of women’s career development (August 2011; Bimrose 2008), including that of older women, resulting in a paucity of relevant frameworks to inform practice for this particular group.

Gender inequality: multidisciplinary and transnational inquiry

A Commission on older women set up in the UK to investigate the position of older women in society found that:

Across every generation women are feeling the strain. Women are being hit three times as hard as men by the Government’s economic policies, despite earning less and owning less than men, and female unemployment has reached its highest level in 25 years … They are working hard to hold families together, increasingly relied upon by their sons and daughters for childcare whilst also caring for elderly parents or sick relatives. They make up six in every ten carers and provide over £7 billion in unpaid support to our economy. They are the generation who fought for better rights in the workplace, made the economic arguments for childcare and fought for equal pay, but for whom the workplace has never caught up.

(Commission on Older Women 2013: 5)

It is against this background that a qualitative research inquiry into women’s career development across the lifespan was carried out with the specific purpose of investigating the career stories of older women (aged 45 to 65) across different country contexts. A particular motivation for the original three researchers in the study (those who carried out research in England, Australia and South Africa) was their interest in finding out the extent to which the women had been supported in their career transitions across their lifetimes. In-depth interviews were carried out with twelve (in one country thirteen) women in this particular age group in nine countries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, England, Germany, Italy, Portugal and South Africa.

A key finding from the research investigation relates to the importance of context. The career development of each of the women in the nine country studies was played out in a particular social, economic and historic context. The impact of these contexts was both profound and unique, as was each woman’s story. Each career trajectory reflected the influence of context, mediated by the styles and characteristics of the women. The iterative nature of the dynamic interaction of the individuality of the women in their social contexts is what provides rich and deep insights into the ways in which these women navigated their ways through political and social upheaval (sometimes revolution), economic boom and bust, and their life cycles of production and/or reproduction.

Part I – The international context: research perspectives

The critical importance of social and economic contexts in which women make their way is the common thread running through the first five chapters in Part I of the book. Chapter 2 invites us to consider a much-neglected aspect of career practice – the geography of gendered employment. An examination of one labour market (India) is presented in Chapter 3, with a particular focus on the position of women in that economic context. This broad perspective is narrowed in Chapter 4, which explores through research, employment policies within employing organisations and the ways in which these impact on women, particularly older women. Ways that jobs can be negatively affected when colonised predominantly by one gender are tracked in Chapter 5. The final chapter in Part I, Chapter 6, reverts to a focus on an organisational perspective on gender.

Part II – National studies: hearing the voices of older women

Findings from the research study of women’s transitions in nine countries provided the genesis and inspiration for the present book. The research methodology (see Chapter 7) was designed to give the women participants a voice. Although all the women in the study were in the age group 45–65 (the age at which women have difficulty entering or re-entering the labour market), the stories they provided were retrospective and spanned their lifetimes. Powerful insights to the career progression of these women across their entire lifespan were collected and analysed (Chapters 8 to 16). This pivotal section of the book also contains an insightful chapter that synthesises the contents of the section. In this synthesis, Duarte (Chapter 17) reflects on the complex interplay of the multiple dimensions affecting the construction of women’s careers, emphasising the importance of the past for an accurate understanding of the present and appreciation of what is possible in the future: ‘Listening to the voices of women aged between 45 and 65 years of age, ages during which the past is re-evaluated and during which the future still stretches out ahead, is a challenge that helps to better understand’ (p. 214).

Part III – Looking to the future

A key motivation for this book was to scrutinise the career support that older women require in the career transitions that typify their trajectories. The final section of the book, therefore, turns attention to the implications of the findings from this book project for career guidance and counselling. These implications are explored and examined from different angles by thought leaders in their fields. Chapter 18 considers the implications of the international research study and findings for career theory. Chapter 19 takes the same approach for career research. Chapter 20 examines some implications for career policy of the research study. Finally, Chapter 21 reflects on career practice. Each of these chapters is hard hitting, identifying crucial angles and challenging readers to confront uncomfortable questions. For the theory, research, policy and practice of the profession of care...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Wendy Patton
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I The international context: research perspectives
• Part II National studies: hearing the voices of older women
• Part III Looking to the future
• Index