Outdoor Careers and Motherhood

Abstract

Background: Working in an outdoor career with extensive travel and long hours away from home can pose challenges for practitioners. For women, motherhood can create constraints and impact one’s career trajectory. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of motherhood on the career trajectory of women working in Adventure Education (AE), Outdoor Education (OE), and/or Experiential Education (EE). Methodology/Approach: About 83 women completed an online survey which included both descriptive (closed-ended) and qualitative (open-ended) questions. Findings/Conclusions: An analysis of the findings included: why women leave their chosen career path, how working mothers manage both career and family, challenges women face and strategies to support working mothers. Implications: There are many challenges motherhood poses for women often requiring women to either leave their chosen career path or change their job responsibilities. Despite these challenges many women have found ways to manage both family and work life however, institutional changes could help women to be more successful.

The Impact of Motherhood on Women’s Career Progression: A Scoping Review of Evidence-Based Interventions

“…More detail on the findings for each question are available in Supplementary Tables S1 and S2. Unsurprisingly, the reviewed literature reinforced that women are still less likely to occupy a leadership position after becoming mothers and indicated multiple barriers to women's leadership and career progression more generally [28,29]. Our analysis evidenced that many of the barriers that women face with regard to their career progression are treated as internal, personal choices rather than structural problems, e.g., references [30][31][32].…”

“…Motherhood was also associated with lower job retention due to barriers like poor access to childcare or other work-life balance challenges, e.g., references [31,32]. In some cases, mothers reported experiencing career interruptions in the form of returning later than expected to work, resorting to informal, flexible, or part-time work, postponing promotion opportunities, or even dropping out of the workforce indefinitely, e.g., references [28,33]. Other papers addressed how exclusively female parental leave policies contribute to reducing women's career opportunities, professional networks, and partnerships, e.g., references [30,36,47].…”

“…Therefore, organizations should focus on flexible policies and work arrangements in response to the changing family circumstances of their employees, such as adjusting working hours, offering remote work options, or avoiding planned meetings late at night. They could also enable job redesigns and temporarily restructure the roles of pregnant women or new mothers by assigning them administrative work and less travel, as suggested by Whittington [28].…”

Maternidade-Trabalho: Experiências Emocionais ao Longo da Gravidez, Licença-Maternidade e Retorno ao Trabalho

“…Ao ficar grávida, a mulher pode se afligir em dar a notícia para sua chefia, com receio dos impactos negativos na sua atividade profissional (Sabat et al, 2016;Whittington, 2019), como possíveis impedimentos de assumir funções de liderança (Koyuncu, Burke, & Wolpin, 2012). Além disso, nem sempre a carga horária é flexibilizada para que a mulher cumpra a agenda do pré-natal (Alstveit, Severinsson, & Karlsen, 2010a).…”

“…Evidências na literatura apontam ser comum a mulher sentir ansiedade ao ter de dar a notícia no ambiente de trabalho, pelos impactos negativos testemunhados na experiência de colegas (Sabat et al, 2016;Whittington, 2019).…”