Women’s careers in Academia: understanding local constraints to the boundaryless career view

Abstract

The paper aims to shed light on how contextual realities shape/ bind women’s career choices and career patterns in academia in the Arab Middle East. By doing so, this paper hopes to bring new insights to the current academic career literature debate and the career debate more generally in regards to the bounded/ boundaryless nature of contemporary careers. The study is qualitative and exploratory in nature. It draws on one-to- one interviews with 23 female academics in early, mid and late careers, working in research universities in the Arab Middle East region. Results show that the choice of academia as a profession is mainly driven by the subjective perception of an academic career as a calling, the attractiveness of the flexibility it provides in addition to many contextual factors such as the lack of attractiveness of alternatives and the encouragement of family members and professors. Moreover, the findings highlight both organizational (Lack of mentoring and university support) and cultural factors (family centrality) that shape/bind women’s careers choices and patterns allowing thus for a better understanding of local constraints to the boundaryless career view in the Arab Middle East context.