Successful Career Women Research Articles

“Re-feminization” of dependent women migrants: Negotiating gender roles in the Chinese digital diaspora

ABSTRACT Chinese women migrating to the US on dependent visas have been paid little attention. ICTs provide them a means to form an online community and to express their voices. Through netnography on a popular online forum of female Chinese immigrants in the USA (www.huaren.us), this article investigates how Chinese dependent visa holders describe and perceive their gender roles after migration. This paper finds that two representative gender roles—“miserable homemakers” and “successful career women”—stand out. However, both these groups of women take on more conservative roles in the domain of reproduction for motherhood and home-making after migration, which is defined as ‘re-feminization’ and represents their increased performance in and valorization of domesticity. By comparing gender norms in the US and China, re-feminization is regarded as resistance to hegemonic Chinese gender norms that devalue domesticity, but do not challenge the sexual division of labor that underlies patriarchal gender norms both in China and the US.

(Egalitarinė) socializacija vaikystėje kaip sėkmingos moters karjeros biržinėse bendrovėse prielaida

[only abstract and keywords in English; full article, abstract and keywords in Lithuanian]
 Globally, gender equality in the boards continues on an upward trajectory with slow but positive progress – in 2016, nearly 19% of seats on the boards of the largest companies globally were held by women, up from about 14% in 2012, with 3 percent of this growth coming in just the last two years (Zehnder 2017). A leading country in this matter, Norway, has introduced its quota law in 2007 requiring boards of listed companies to have a gender balance of at least 40/60. The ten years result of this quota happens to be an increase in female board members from 6 percent in 2002 to 42 percent in 2016 (CORE 2017). The EU also tries to push for a quota for women on company boards so as to address the slow progress toward gender equality in the senior ranks of publicly listed businesses. Although 62.7% of new university graduates are women (graduating with Master’s degrees – 66.5%, and 58.9% graduating with doctorates) in 2014, they are outnumbered by men in leadership positions in the corporate sector in the Lithuania. When looking at the top executive positions, there are no women CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) in the listed companies in Lithuania. From December 2013 to September 2014, the share of women on boards (executives) in Lithuania increased by 2.8% (Šidlauskienė, Pocevičienė 2015). Thus, the current moment offers a strategic opportunity to proactively enhance gender equality and prevent any more widening of the gender and skills gaps. This research was aimed to analyze the theoretical aspects of gender balance on the executive boards of the listed companies and to explore childhood socialization predictors that impede (or facilitate) the increase of successful participation of women in decision-making bodies in the listed Lithuanian companies. The successful career women, or the high flyers theory, has been used to argue that childhood socialization, education, personality and motivation indicated personal traits needed for board level roles (White et al. 1992). Second, the individual career capital theory argues that taking up such a role consists of three ways of knowing: knowing-how, knowing-whom and knowing-why. Research results shows that egalitarian childhood socialization influences successful women’s careers in the listed company boards. Certain individual characteristics, such as integrity and honesty, accountability, result-orientation, being a team player, a relationship builder, a good listener and communicator, and genuine commitment and energy, are in demand in such companies as PANDORA A/S, Spencer Stuart, Board Succession etc.

The Career Woman and the Princess

Fashioning is critical to explorations of television identities and American melodrama-thriller series Scandal (2012-17) provides opportunities to explore representations of ethnicity together with depictions of interracial romance and intercourse. Utilising semiotics I explore the contribution of costume designer Lyn Paolo to the construction of the Black-American heroine of the series, Olivia Pope, successful career woman and lover of a white, male President. Arguing for the potential of female spectacle and soft-core pornography as progressive I consider Paolo’s influences, suggesting that Olivia’s fashioning transformations illustrate her as dandy-flâneuse, one controlling the visualisation of her identity.

Post-Socialist Femininity Unleashed/Restrained: Reconfigurations of Gender in Chinese Television Dramas

In post-socialist China, gender norms are marked by rising divorce rates (Kleinman et al.), shifting attitudes towards sex (Farrer; Yan), and a growing commercialisation of sex (Zheng). These phenomena have been understood as indicative of market reforms unhinging past gender norms. In the socialist period, the radical politics of the time moulded women as gender neutral even as state policies emphasised their feminine roles in maintaining marital harmony and stability(Evans). These ideas around domesticity bear strong resemblance to pre-socialist understandings of womanhood and family that anchored Chinese society before the Communists took power in 1949. In this pre-socialist understanding, women were categorised into a hierarchy that defined their rights as wives, mothers, concubines, and servants (Ebrey and Watson; Wolf and Witke). Women who transgressed these categories were regarded as potentially dangerous and powerfulenough to break up families and shake the foundations of Chinese society (Ahern). This paper explores the extent to which understandings of Chinese femininity have been reconfigured in the context of China’s post-1979 development, particularly after the 2000s.

1920-30년대 한국의 이상적 '신여성' 이미지와 패션

The term "new woman" (신여성 [Sinyeoseong], 新女性) refers to an idealized image of contemporary women during the so-called modern period in East Asia. In Korea, these "modern girls" were also referred to as modan (毛斷), or "cut-hair", reflecting changes in appearances that rejected the traditional value system in favor of "the new" in everyday life. Although it was used to refer to the perceived educated leaders of this new period, it also had the negative connotation of referring to frivolous women only interested in the latest fashion. The popular discourse on this "new woman" was constantly changing during this early modern period in East Asia, ranging from male-driven women's movements to women-driven liberal and socialist movements. The discourse often included ideals of what constituted female impeccability in women's domestic roles and enlightened views on housekeeping, yet in most cases the "new woman" was also expected to be a good wife and mother as well as a successful career woman. The concept of the "new woman" was also accompanied by an upheaval in women's social roles and their physical boundaries, and resulted in women repositioning themselves in the new society. The new look was a way of constructing their bodies to fit their new roles, and this again was rapidly reproduced in visual media. Newspapers, magazines, and plays had gained immense popularity by this time and provided visual material for the age with covers, advertisements, and illustrations. This research will explore the fashion of the "new woman" through archival resources, specifically magazines published in the 1920s and 1930s. It will investigate how women's appearances and the images they pursued reflected the ideal image of the "new woman." Fashion information providers, trendsetters, and levels of popular acceptance will also be examined in the context of the early stage of the fashion industry in East Asia, including production and distribution. Additionally, as the idea of the "new woman" was a worldwide phenomenon throughout the 19th and early 20th century, the effect of Japanese colonialism on the structure of Korean culture and its role as a cultural mediator will also be considered in how the ideal image of beauty was sought, and whether this was a western, colonial, or national preference.

Challenging the status quo: the enabling role of gender sensitive fathers, inspirational mothers and surrogate parents in Uganda

Within a context where relatively few girls complete secondary education, 18 women were interviewed in Uganda with the objective of ascertaining how they were able to overcome the challenges they encountered to become well-qualified and successful career-women. An important finding from this research was that although parental involvement in Uganda is a much less formal process than that reported in literature from the Global North, it is nevertheless crucially important, with parents and other key figures enabling, supporting and encouraging the young women's education, and acting as role models. The paper highlights, however, the gendered nature of such involvement, with some fathers having the advantages of authority, education, money and time to enable them to stand apart from their communities in supporting their daughters' education. In contrast, mothers frequently struggled through lack of resources, yet their unstinting hard work and persistence offered inspiration and role modelling of a different kind. Interviewees growing up without one or both biological parents meanwhile relied on a network of people who in effect became surrogate parents, in various ways assisting them to complete their schooling.

KHADIJAH BINTI KHAWAILID RA SOSOK PEREMPUAN KARIER

Imaging career women doesn’t always negative, women in Islamic law is allowed to work in accordance with their respective capabilities. The first figure of the Prophet’s wife Khadijah ra prove this. Khadija ra is the figure of a woman who is very tough work, international travel to Sham (Syria) and some other countries just to do business with colleagues spirit of honesty and openness. Khadija reimage as a career woman who could finance the universal mission of the Prophet at the beginning to the end of his mission the Prophet left a huge financial legacy that the Prophet could map the entire estate for the first time with the wife of a social solidarity fund for orphans, poor, submitted to the Baitul Mal and a few prophetic and apostolic interests. So, if there is a presumption that Islamic law forbids women work outside the home is actually contrary to the presumption of reality figure Mother of believers, Khadijah ra as a successful career woman in the running wheels of international and regional business in accordance with the principles of Islamic Syari’ah (law).

‘Full power despite stress’: A discourse analytical examination of the interconnectedness of postfeminism and neoliberalism in the domain of work in an international women’s magazine

Stories and images of successful career women and support for women’s advancement in working life have become hallmarks of contemporary postfeminist media culture, and especially of women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan. While in previous research these features have been seen as signs for a new, popular feminism, more recently they have also been connected to the growing hegemony of neoliberal governance, a mode of power that ultimately aims at the economization of the social and is fundamentally exercised in and through discourse. The aim of this article is to investigate further the interconnectedness of these two phenomena, postfeminism and neoliberalism, in the domain of work, using the example of the German edition of Cosmopolitan. For a detailed and multilayered investigation the study draws on linguistically oriented discourse analysis, focusing on the operation of a ‘discourse of postfeminist self-management’. The examination shows how this discourse, while on the one hand evoking an ethos of feminist engagement, on the other seeks to guide readers to mould themselves into a version of the entrepreneurial self required by the neoliberalized world of work.

Do sexist organizational cultures create the Queen Bee?

'Queen Bees' are senior women in masculine organizational cultures who have fulfilled their career aspirations by dissociating themselves from their gender while simultaneously contributing to the gender stereotyping of other women. It is often assumed that this phenomenon contributes to gender discrimination in organizations, and is inherent to the personalities of successful career women. We argue for a social identity explanation and examine organizational conditions that foster the Queen Bee phenomenon. Participants were 94 women holding senior positions in diverse companies in The Netherlands who participated in an on-line survey. In line with predictions, indicators of the Queen Bee phenomenon (increased gender stereotyping and masculine self-descriptions) were found mostly among women who indicated they had started their career with low gender identification and who had subsequently experienced a high degree of gender discrimination on their way up. By contrast, the experience of gender discrimination was unrelated to signs of the Queen Bee phenomenon among women who indicated to be highly identified when they started their career. Results are discussed in light of social identity theory, interpreting the Queen Bee phenomenon as an individual mobility response of low gender identified women to the gender discrimination they encounter in their work.

A constructivist approach to student development: Effat University case study

Sustainable education requires a new approach to knowledge acquisition and learning. This approach is manifested in merging student experience inside and outside the classroom, which eventually results in shaping the 21st century lifelong learner. This paper presents an innovative student development model based on the constructivist approach; showing the collaboration between student affairs and academics. Furthermore, it illustrates a unique experience implemented at Effat University for developing the student as a whole person. This is done to complement the student’s academic experience with the necessary skills and abilities derived from Effat University mission that focuses on creating women leaders. The student finds herself in a journey of self development and growth throughout the course of her study until graduation. At the time of graduation, she is equipped with all what it takes to be a successful career woman and a leader of change in her society.

Performing the enterprising subject: Gendered strategies for success (?)

For women in contemporary corporate life, negotiating and performing a “professional” identity is a process requiring much time, energy, and self‐surveillance. Yet, many women feel compelled to undertake this project despite the challenges it poses. These women often turn to popular success literature for strategies to help them craft and enact successful identities. In this essay, we analyze the popular success literature and compare its prescriptions for success with the voices of actual, successful career women. We explore the paradoxes and contradictions within and across these discourses in our efforts to deconstruct masculine constructions/performances of professionalism.

Learning to Re-imagine: Uncovering affective investments in female film characters

ABSTRACT In this article I explore how I use my imagination to analyse the two main female characters, Dede and Jane, in the film Little Man Tate (1991). Although I perceive Dede and Jane to be portrayed in very stereotypical ways, my analyses do not remain limited to this detached level of viewing, rather I try to gain an understanding of the tremendous pain I experienced while watching their lives performed on the screen. I examine closely how my imagination has been shaped by the traditional message that women must choose between motherhood and a career and how, as a result, I invested in the conflict between Dede who I perceived as a 'good mother' stereotype and Jane who I perceived as a 'successful career woman' stereotype. By reassessing how I have learned to evaluate female characters, I discuss how students, like myself, can be taught to uncover their affective investments in the filmic stories they are learning to criticise.

The stress of managerial and professional women: is the price too high?

‘Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time. Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live’. Dr S. Weir Mitchell, 1855 When Dr Mitchell, purportedly the greatest North American nerve specialist of his time, gave the above advice to his patient Charlotte Perkins Gilman, he almost certainly believed he was helping her get over a severe nervous condition. Fortunately, she did not take his advice. Instead she devoted herself to the study of economics and regained her health. The perspectives offered to working women by many a modern day Dr Mitchell appear to have changed somewhat in subtlety, but little in kind. For example, the August 18, 1986 cover of Fortune magazine featured a beaming mother and cherubic child illustrating the lead article, entitled ‘Why women are bailing out’. The article goes on to tell why four of the ‘best’ women MBAs had quit the workforce. One stated ‘I had to hire and fire people … I just don't want the hassle’ (of corporate life). Another having passed up a promotion at a Houston bank, ‘quit to have her first child’ and after her second had no plans to go back to work. A third complained: ‘I just couldn't do it. I watched other women sliding as they tried to juggle both career and family, making themselves crazy in the process’. And the fourth left a big accounting firm because the ‘hours were bad, and is now happier as a “part time teacher”’. While the Fortune article mentioned several reasons for women's leaving the corporate world ranging from competing family demands to discrimination, the underlying messages were clearly that mothers have to choose between children and career and that the business world is too cold, uncaring and tough for women, in a word no place for a lady. A chorus of such articles have appeared in the popular media warning against the dangers of career commitment for women, which are said to include everything from burnout, infertility, alcoholism, heart attacks to terminal spinsterhood (Faludi, 1991). More serious treatments emanating from academia have often reached similar conclusions. These dire pronouncements are especially influential to young women contemplating a professional or managerial career, but indeed those already in such careers may also wonder if they have made a bad choice. To answer such questions, this paper will explore some aspects of the relationship between career and emotional health and well-being for a group of highly successful career women.

A Tapestry of Values: Gifted Women Speak Out

How do the expectations of young gifted women compare with those of successful career women? In two studies conducted with 1) able young women in university and; 2) prominent Canadian women, similar concerns were voiced. Pressures to conform to stereotypical roles, inconsistent vertical development of careers, and the importance of connections were reported. Independence and contributing to the welfare of others were emphasized, as were concern for the multiple responsibilities of active career women.

Successful career women: their professional and personal characteristics

Introduction Review of Related Literature Methods Results Summary, Discussion and Recommendations Appendices: Letter to Organizations Questionnaire Cover Letter Career Women Questionnaire Interview Questions References Index

Successful career women at midlife: crises and transitions.

Recent theories and studies have gradually clarified some of the psychological processes of middle age. Most interesting are the contributions that maintain different developmental processes for women and men. Three of the major theories in the area seem to converge in proposing a process of gradual cross-sex transition in adulthood, the result of which may be a more integrated or androgynous personality structure in the second half of life. A different model of adult development, centered on midlife crisis, was proposed by Levinson et al. as a universal stage in men's life cycle. Similar theory and research about women are not as conclusive. The present study investigated in depth the life history of twenty-five American career women at midlife. Such women sociologically combine feminine and masculine roles and may be considered as a test case for the theories. The transitions experienced by these women during their lifetimes were categorized into "masculine" or "feminine" types. It was found that they were distributed about equally between the two types of transitions, thus excluding a simple biological approach. Acute midlife crisis was reported by only about a third of the sample. It is proposed that the double role protects these women from acute crisis.

Occupation, Competence, and Role Overload as Evaluation Determinants of Successful Women1

In order to determine what variables contribute to or detract from the inter‐ personal attraction of a successful career woman, 80 male and 80 female introductory psychology students at a large western state university viewed one of eight different videotapes of a female stimulus person discussing aspects of her career and homelife. Two levels of occupation (traditional vs. nontraditional), two levels of competcnce (high vs. low), and two levels of role overload (high vs. low) were factorially varied for each videotape. The Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) was used as a covariate, thereby equalizing attitudes between the sexes. A multivariate analysis of covariance was performed on the data. Results indicated that all main effects‐competence, role overload, occupation, and sex of subjects‐were significant. Also significant was a sex of subject by occupation interaction and two three‐way interactions. These results were discussed in the context of how they increase our understanding of college students' perceptions of successful career women.