The Meaning of Career Development to Women in Academics

Abstract

The word refers to a series of work undertaken during the period of employment, regardless of or the status of the organization (Feldman & Arnold, 1983). Career is a life experience, behaviour, and attitude of a person with respect to the activities and work experience, values, and aspirations to develop throughout one's life-time (Bemadin & Russell, 1998). According to Hadipranata (2004) career refers to all the positions held by a person including house hold cores of a house wife. Flippo (1985) defines career as an employment which has separate activities, but interrelated, continued work, regular, and meaningful in one's life. According to Mathys (1983), career is a series of work and life experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant.Cascio (2002) mentions that career is the development of a person's work experience during the period of employment. Cascio began his definition by giving an example of the first employment until the end of his working life. Meaningful career by Cascio is an office that once belonged to the organization or to a single organization. According to Werther and Davis (1982), career is all work undertaken during the working-age person. Bhagwan and Bhushan (1981) define career as a respectable occupation in which a reasonable person in his youth hope to go forward and pursue it until he reaches the retirement.The term career does not only refer to the changes that are related to occupational mobility, improvement in an organization and the struggles of the employee to get a better position. Career is more likely related to mobility of the employee horizontally and sometimes vertically. It means that the word is no longer synonymous with a job within an organization. Today more and more individuals who have different life experiences are called 'dual career' because they do double job in two or three different organizations or it can be said that they may have different jobs at different organisations at the same time. It implies that there is no presumption that the organization has a system of unilateral control over individual careers since individuals have the right and ability to plan and manage their own careers.Based on all of the definitions above, it can be concluded that a career is a sequence of positions that has ever been owned by a person. The word used by the author of this paper is therefore that referring to the functional of the faculty members, especially academic women, during their service at the university. The functional level investigated in the research is the of a professor position which is the highest in the academic life which is attained gradually life a general or field marshal in the army. For this paper, career is defined as a series (sequence) of positions occupied by a person during a particular life time (Cascio, 2002). Career is interpreted as the work done formally with a focus on continuous improvement and the additional ability of an employee to reach higher level in an organisation (Bemadin & Russell, 1998).Career development requires time and individual efforts. Any employee who wish to succeed in career, has to prove that is able to carry out duties in accordance with the requirements of a given task or position. Thus, an employee who is not able to perform the duties or tasks prescribed by a particular job/ or position, can be categorized as a failure. This can cost such a person promotions hence, being stagnant, or delay in career development within an organization.Functional career of academic womenIn Indonesia, a functional career is a that comprises of aworking load, tasks, responsibilities, leadership tasks, and rights of government employees. The performance of duties is based on expertise, specific skills, and self-reliance. Functional career is stipulated in the Government Regulation Number 16, 1994. A functional is set based on the Presidential Decree which is determined based on the Minister's proposal. …