Married, mom and manager – how can this be combined with an international career?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of females combining global careers, in particular, frequent international business travel and a dual-career family. With the increasing popularity of alternate forms of expatriation, females have the opportunity to follow a global career while being in a dual-career partnership and having children. Previous research has suggested that alternatives to long-term expatriation, such as international business travel, are considered more family friendly. Integrating family and international business travel, however, still poses many challenges to women. This paper examines the ways in which they handle this challenging situation according to social capital theory. It presents initial exploratory insights stemming from interview data including 25 female international business travelers living in dual-career families from four Western and non-Western countries on four different continents. These interviews, which were analyzed using template analysis, show common ways and similar experiences and understanding of integrating family and career life as female non-traditional expatriates across cultures. Differences remain, however, because of conditions in the local environment.