Basia McDougall MPhil.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

necessarily separated from family and often women do not follow organisations’expectations, frameworks and legislative mind sets. As Hewlett (2007) says:The dominant approach of conventional theories of career within the literature oforganisations and work tends to relegate women’s career matters to concerns forobstacles to career opportunities, the equalisation of rewards and benefits, concernfor childcare and maternity provision (Elian, 1982, Flanders, 1994, Hewitt, 1974)....they fail to address more fundamental questions such as whether or not the conceptof ‘career’ is adequate to the task of describing the range of motivations,rationalisations and means of evaluating outcomes that might be held to characterisewomen’s experience of work.Hewlett goes on to emphasise that women who are successful in the male model of careerare in minority, 60% are not successful. It must then, be questioned what career ‘success’ is,although, as Hopfl and Atkinson (2000) point out, in questioning the notion of careersuccess: “you are exposing the fragility of organisations’ power bases and in doing sopotentially taking power away from them – and men”. In Buzzanell’s and Miu’s paper (2007)on maternity role negotiations, point out: “Sexuality dissolves the veneer of rationality andgender neutrality in organizing.” (p. 465) as well supporting the notion that career decisionsare often as a result of gender specific issues such as balancing work and life. Academically,in terms of defining what a career success is, the following captures the problematic genderdifferences theme: “our overall conclusion is that male-defined constructions of work andcareer success continue to dominate organizational research and practice” (O’Neil, Hopkinsand Bilimoria 2008 p.727). This male-dominated model of career and career success isdiscussed by Stone (2008). Whilst it is aimed at an American audience, the message is acommon one echoed also in Mainero and Sullivan (2006) and the aforementioned Hewlett(2007). The feminist perspective is one which will be returned to later in chapter 3 as it alsoinforms the common theme in career theory of role conflict. The feminist perspective aside,there appears generally to be an ‘unhealthy dependence’ on organisations (Bosley, Arnoldand Cohen, 2007) when mapping a traditional career and therefore what it means to besuccessful in one. Notably, since identity and occupation are closely linked – and indeedvalues are tied up in this (Briscoe et al. 2006), it is perhaps not surprising that transitionperiods when considering going ‘off-ramps’ during maternity leave are of interest to thecurrent research. In doing so, traditional notions of career success lose relevance.2.3 TransitionsTransitions have not gone unrecognised but they are arguably under-represented in careertheories. Arthur, for example, mentions women using maternity as a transition but since only4 of 13 in managerial or professional occupations had children, the sample in the associated36