The Significance of Career Narrative in Examining a High-Achieving Woman's Career (Report‪)‬

Women's need for meaningful and satisfying work opportunities has received considerable interest and focus in the career development literature over past decades. Erikson (as cited in Betz, 2002), in reference to Freud in 1950, commented that women, like men, needed an array of sources of satisfaction and that the well-adjusted human being is able to 'love and to work' successfully. Both sexes need to be satisfied not just through relationships with friends and family, but also through achieving in the world of work. Until recently, understandings of career were separate for men and women with the assumption that men choose a career subsequent to adolescence, whereas women's careers were chosen as a temporary measure. This notion has been said by to be a hindrance to the formulation of a theory of women's career development (Poole & Langan-Fox, 1997). Smart and Peterson (1997) stated that the career issues women face are distinctive, and differ from those of men. Pringle and McCulloch Dixon (2003) suggested women's careers are broader than men's careers, referencing Bateson: 'men build careers while women compose lives' (1989, p. 3). They consider a more holistic view of career as 'one that has the capacity to embody the emotional, spiritual, physical, psychological as well as the outer achievement of an "objective" career' (Pringle & McCulloch Dixon, 2003, p. 291). Unlike men's careers, women's careers are not exclusively defined by involvement in paid work, and can be considered an amalgam of personal development.