Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis

Abstract

Despite scholarly debate on the topic of success, how women define career success remains unclear. For many decades, research on the concept of success has largely used quantitative methods to assess the external aspects of success in a male-dominated culture. Using a total of 18 articles from 1999 to 2020, this qualitative meta-synthesis aims to gain detailed insights into women’s definitions of career success and to capture their perspectives on the barriers they face. A systematic search was conducted across four databases: Sociological Abstracts, SocINDEX, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. This study is novel in that it is the first synthesized research that qualitatively studies the concept of career success. From this review, three distinct themes regarding women’s definition of career success emerged: (1) having support, (2) having accomplishments, and (3) feeling belonging. This article also establishes three themes regarding the obstacles to women’s career path toward success: (1) work–family/work–life imbalance, (2) gender bias/gender discrimination, and (3) the lack of mentors and role models. In contrast to previous research, the findings of this qualitative meta-synthesis indicate that while women define career success individually, they acknowledge that the professional objective aspects of success are important or even central to them in their life. The limitations of the study are noted, and the implications and future research directions are discussed.

Gender expectations, socioeconomic inequalities and definitions of career success: A qualitative study with university students

“…Success has been defined as reaching one's goals, accomplishing a task or, overall, when an individual's outcome turns out well, desirable or favourable [25]. Although this definition can be applied to different situations, research about success definitions has traditionally focused on (a) career success, this is the achievements associated to individuals work experiences [26][27][28]; or (b) personal success linked to the individuals' career [29].…”

“…Therefore, women that conceptualise career success in a male-stereotypical way (e.g. economic success, financial mobility) may be seen as violating gender stereotypes prescriptions [40] and, in turn, change their career success definitions to a more female-stereotypic conceptualization, associated with having a family and positive relationships [41], or having social support and feeling to belong [26], which are less valued in society compared to success in the workplace [42].…”

“…For less socioeconomically privileged groups, financial circumstances might be more important as they have not been covered/taken for granted during their life. Financial circumstances might be perceived as a first step to reach happiness [26] and, therefore, are prioritised by socioeconomically disadvantaged groups and can be a way to reach happiness (for an analysis of the relationship between happiness and financial circumstance see [47,48]).…”

Women Academics in Theological and Mission Organisations

“…These statistics make depressing reading and raise the question, what is stopping women from being promoted into these higher positions and how do women perceive career success since what motivates them may be different from traditional academic measures. A recent study conducted by Effat Borna (Borna et al, 2022) reviewed 18 articles published between 1999 and 2020. The articles were selected using a systematic approach and drew on the following four databases: Sociological Abstracts, SocINDEX, SCOPUS and Google Scholar.…”

Building leaders for the UN Ocean Science Decade: a guide to supporting early career women researchers within academic marine research institutions

“…Some women ECRs may prefer to have a woman as a mentor, as they may have better insights into the gendered barriers that women ECRs face in achieving advancement. But this may be a challenge, due to the lack of women role models within academia who obtained higher positions in their workplace (Borna et al, 2022). Formal mentoring programmes can help to improve, build on or compliment the work of academic institutions, learned societies, research networks, conferences, and funders.…”