Purpose The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how highly educated women respond to career chance events in a Korean context where traditional cultural values and male-dominated organizational culture coexist. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with highly educated women operationalized as women with doctoral degrees in and out of Korea. The authors used a collaborative research process with a team of ten Korean-born researchers who have built consensus on research themes through discussions on the collection and analysis of a large data set, thus reducing the researcher bias issue inherent in qualitative research. Findings In an analysis of the interview data collected, the authors report on three themes: before obtaining a doctoral degree, during and after their doctoral study and responses (coping strategies) to chance events in their careers. Highly educated women’s pursuing a doctoral degree was a way to maintain work–life balance in Korea where women are expected to take a primary caregiver role. After obtaining a doctoral degree, participants struggled with limited job opportunities in the male-dominated higher education. Women’s unplanned and unexpected chance events are intertwined with the male-dominated culture in Korea, and career interruptions as such a chance event, whether voluntary or involuntary, happened largely due to family reasons. In this context, highly educated women responded to chance events largely at individual and family levels and articulated the need for support at organizational and government levels. Research limitations/implications The study findings confirm the literature that women’s careers are limited by traditional family roles in non-Western countries where strong patriarchal culture is prevalent. Particularly, women’s career interruptions surfaced as a critical chance event that either disrupts or delays their careers largely because of family issues. Future research is called for to identify both individual and contextual factors that influence women’s decisions on voluntary and involuntary career interruptions as their responses to chance events. Practical implications Based on highly educated women’s coping strategies largely at individual and family levels, we suggest national human resource development policies put in place not to lose out on the opportunity to develop highly educated women with doctoral degrees as a quality workforce for a nation’s sustainable economic growth. Additionally, organizations need to be aligned with the government policies and programs for the provision of developmental programs for women in the workplace, beginning with highly educated women’s career planning, while creating organizational culture to promote gender equality as a long-term goal. Originality/value The participants’ voluntary career breaks helped them care for their children, be involved in their children’s education, reflect on work–life balance after having long hours of work for many years and move forward with personal satisfaction. Voluntary career breaks can be understood as highly educated women’s unique way of responding to chance events.
This study aims to analyze the Korean studies on the learning experiences of middle-aged women from the multi-stage life approach. The women in selected 66 studies feature different experiences and educational needs of the women who are different from those of the previous generation. Through systematic review as a research method, general trends of the studies, the learning characteristics of the learners, the challenges and obstacles in learning and the suggestions addressed by the researchers of these studies were explored. As a result of the analysis, three key problems of the studies were derived. First, the transformative learning theory as a major theoretical perspective chosen in many studies tends to be problematic to be a explanatory lens of understanding middle-aged women as learners due to possible bias in the participant selection. Second, the learning experiences of the women are generally reported as ‘delayed experiences’ which may obscure the existence of previous learning experiences. Third, challenges and obstacles experienced in the learning process were mainly reported in the field of formal education, but the solutions suggested by the researchers are largely limited to individual efforts. Based on these critiques, suggestions were presented to build a robust lifelong education environment for middle-aged adults including these women.
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