Factors Influencing Career Aspirations and Challenges Faced in Their Pursuit – A Study on Indian Women It Professionals

Abstract

The woman work force has become increasingly involved post World War II. With respect to women employment, the last hundred years have witnessed the shift in traditional women-oriented roles to previously held male oriented ones. Undoubtedly there has been a spurt in women’s participation in the labor force and this in turn has led to focused study on career aspirations of women. Career aspirations are the fundamental building blocks for any successful career of a working professional. They are shaped in the formative years before employment and undergo transformation when the individual goes into employment. In the pursuit of their career aspirations, working women professionals often experience myriad challenges.

This study attempts to examine and rank the factors influencing career aspirations as well as classify the different phases of career aspirations into three broad categories. These are Formative phase, Transformative- Phase-I & II and Matured phase. The study uses snowball sampling and convenience sampling method and the sample size is 414 women from the domain of IT, ITES and BPO. The study classifies the challenges faced by working women professionals into sociocultural, structural, and personal.

Garrett ranking method has been used in the study to rank the reasons for career aspirations. The study has successfully developed a model on literature reviews.