‘WOMEN OF CAREER’: WORK AS A VALUE AND A SOURCE OF EMPOWERMENT

Abstract

The author analyses categories of work and career, understood as the space of experiencing personal satisfaction and self-efficacy. In this regard work has an emancipatory function, especially for women, for whom professional activity is a way to become independent. Different meanings of work for women are reconstructed in relation to the ways of their professional engagement: ‘women of work’, and ‘women of career’. The author is focused on the second type. As an example of a ‘woman of career’ it is described a case of one dual-career family interviewed, as a part of bigger biographical research on gender equality in dual-career marriages. The case analysis shows that woman’s professional biography is constructed around the central category of continuous development. Professional career becomes a source of empowerment, release from traditionally assigned gender roles, and a space of acknowledgement of human dignity.