There are changes in emerging career advancements in the responsibilities and roles which change processes and strategies where women are working in various gender structure careers. Career women are faced with different choices and challenges in their decisions, planning, and throughout their working histories. A qualitative analysis of a structured focus group identifies various matters that affect a woman’s career. This includes career changes, career encouragers, family patterns, career decision making patterns, personal compromises, and career obstacles. These women are faced with various challenges as they decide their career paths inside and outside organizations from different personal and career objectives.
External and internal influences are great personal agencies that create a difference in the type of work one chooses. One of the interviewees stated that ere partner encourages her to go back to school and get her degree. A woman’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivation lies in strongly correlated decisions to pursue a career. Most women have influences from external factors when it comes to making career choices. Intrinsic motivations such as personal development and challenges derived from important considerations that women make are drivers to making choices. Internal experiences affect a person’s attitude as well as their health. One of the respondents stated that her brother’s death was the biggest motivation for her career choice.
The theory of reasoned action explains that career choices involve individual internal factors such as interest in things or external factors like family or economic factors. The theory states that particular behavioral intent is influenced by their opinions and social objectives norms in their surroundings. All the respondents in the focus group agreed that a specific point of their lives they had strong motivations for their career decisions.
Before making decisions, women have to consider their families. Women with family and children are faced with various challenges when it comes to career advancements. Since women are regarded as the primary caregivers, they are often forced to make decisions about being part-time workers instead of full-time workers. One interviewee stated that to balance family and work, they had to reduce their working hours from full-time employment to part-time employment. They are also subjected to choices between their career and family when sometimes they have to prioritize one over the other. After working for long hours, ‘ women are expected to have the same level of energy if not more, when they get home to their families. One of the respondents said that she takes a lot of coffee to keep up with such energy.
Some of these women wish they had attained more goals in life than what they were subjected to work with. The consequence of a woman having a child is that their career choices and goals are affected as well. They sometimes have to find careers that align with their family obligations as mothers. In general, women with children are not able to maintain the same professional footing as men or women without children. Being a mother results in a woman taking time away from work to be with their children. Consequently, their career advancement opportunities reduce as a result. Families are essential to women and to support them the undertake the available jobs regardless of the job specification to specific genders. These careers may be challenging, monotonous, and not what they wanted as their careers, but they have limited alternatives.
Women are also faced with the challenge of taking time off for maternity leave or other family matters. Sometimes they are afraid of taking long period breaks of eight or more months because their absence is highly noted in the working environment, which dominated by the men. In some cases, the career roles might change during their times off, which becomes a disadvantage when the woman comes back to find that is in a different position from when she left. One of the respondents said that she was afraid to tell her boss about being pregnant because it might have affected her work if she did not receive good reception. Women also fear that when they get back after extended leave, they might not be as good in their work as they were before. They might have personal feelings of not being enough. In most cases, women that go on extended leaves are at a disadvantage since they reduce their chances of getting promotions or raises, and sometimes they can be demoted or laid off. This becomes another issue is when applying for other jobs since being fired is not a positive image on the resume.
Women also face hardship when they leave their children after a long time of spending time with them to go back to work. They are sometimes made to feel guilty for choosing to work instead of caring for their families. After maternity leave, these women experience the guilt of leaving their children, which can cause psychological issues. In some cases, they take their problems at work where they can severely hurt their working ethics. One of the respondents’ stated that to cope with the personal issues that she was taking to work, she had to ask for an extra day off and work four days in a week to be with her child, which reduced her guilt levels and therefore balancing her professional and domestic roles.
Another challenge that faces career women is the organization culture. All the focus group respondents indicated that most organization base their behavior on gender stereotypes. Different genders develop self-image from their childhood and internalize expectations of different roles to specific genders. Some jobs are viewed to be of a particular gender. For instance, one of the interviewees stated that when she went to work at HR although she thought that it was supposed to be older men who worked that type of job. It turned out to be true since she was one of the few women and one of the youngest workers in her organization. Gender stereotype on job title is deeply embedded in patterns of thinking from both male and female. One respondent stated that she expects a male electrician and not a female when she makes a call for an electrician. The line for gender roles has significantly blurred with the evolving industries where women are taking up jobs that were once thought to be men’s jobs. This categorizing also comes as feedback when a woman says a particular job title and is told those are men jobs.
Some women are highly educated and absorbed in the working world, but despite this, they are still viewed as homemakers. These women feel the need to choose their careers over having families. The aspect of career grounding includes how the woman was raised to envision a lifetime career, including if they want to work or not, also their accessibility to opportunities and attaining the vision of having equal career opportunities as men. Family expectations like pregnancies quickly interrupt their idea of being equal to men, which can put a break to their careers; hence they do not have similar growth compare to that of men. Women have been known to shy away from specific jobs since they do not want to compete in industries that are stereotypically believed to be men’s domains. However, gender stereotype does not entirely affect a women career choice since women are mostly blinded by social judgment.
Another challenge that career women face is missing out on informal social events where they decide to work to catch up on reports or other responsibilities. Women’s career advancement is profoundly affected by family and employment obligations and commitments. In the survey, a respondent stated that it was sad just having their working environment as their social places. Networks increase an individual’s visibility to other people who can assist in developing business opportunities. Career women with family responsibilities only get the chance to create relationships when participating in social endeavors during the working hours.
The outcome of this segregation is that they get limited access to resources that might be essential in undertaking skills for their career advancements from this informal links. The informal interactions assist in forming friendships, alliances, and creating professional groups with similar professional interests hence improving a person’s access to skills, experiences, and knowledge. Building relationships with other people helps a person to get a variety of social networks where they can gain cooperate culture and gain the support of their career choices. These networks also provide instrumental and psychosocial platforms of linkages that women require to access top-level management or improve in the lead of their career choices. These networks boost their effectiveness while seeking to be in influential or leadership positions. This challenge of missing out may affect an individual in a way that includes having restricted knowledge of ongoing matters at personal and organizational scenarios. Also, women may experience future difficulties in acquiring alliances that might boost their careers.
Access to training, development, and education opportunities is another problem that affects career women in organizations. Training and development help all workers to increase their performance knowledge and skills. For women to have career advancements, they require training, development, and education initiatives, which attributes towards their involvement. These opportunities are usually limited to women that have full-time jobs where they can attend conferences and travel for several days or weeks. This limits women with families from job promotions and other business opportunities. This challenge clarity is intensely pertinent to women who may be based on several aspects. Career advancement structure should have clear and equal opportunities for all employees.
Change can allow the development of women to get opportunities. Hence they require training opportunities. To acquire career development and promotion is vital for women to attain the necessary qualifications and skills. Lack of education skills and information proves to be an impediment factor that affects job performance. One of the respondents stated that her being a full-time worker gave her training opportunities that other women lacked in part-time or those with family responsibilities. Training is an essential area for career advancements, and procured knowledge and skills help improve overall performance and employee satisfaction. Proper training programs enhance women’s chances of developing confidence when providing solutions to various challenges.
Factors that most affect women’s career choices are their interest in the fields and their economic needs. Their decisions are affected by their motivation, personality, and behaviors. Challenges that affect women include gender stereotype, family obligations missing out on informal events, and limited access to training and development opportunities. The gender stereotype challenge is mainly based on the view that women have specific job roles that are regarded to be more suitable than men. Some of these women experience stigmatization for working part-time jobs where they are sometimes viewed as if they are not working as hard as the full-time workers. Women mostly lose their occupation relations and achievements due to their role in the family, which is perceived to be more important than their professionals.
Limited informal interactions affect women in a certain way since they get limited access to interactive networks that can create an alliance that would boost their careers. As a result of difficulties in acquiring access to these relations, their career growth is hindered. They gain little knowledge of what is happening in the professional and organizations setting. Training and development challenge is seen affecting women on a part-time basis where they are not given opportunities for education, training, and development of their careers. Training affects women’s jobs since they must acquire skills and knowledge for them to have opportunities for promotions and professional development. Organizations should be considerate to these mothers and part-time workers to ensure the gain opportunities for training and educations. Most career challenges create an inhabitance of successful job performances and vocation advancements.