Crosscurrents in the River of Time: Conceptualizing the Complexities of Women's Careers

Women face a complex panorama of choices and constraints in their career and life development. This article presents an approach to the understanding of women's careers that (a) takes into account non-work as well as work issues; (b) incorporates subjective as well as objective measures of career and life success; (c) incorporates the influence of personal, organizational, and societal factors on women's choices and outcomes; and (d) does not assume that women's careers go through a predictable sequence of stages over time. Such an approach is vastly different from traditional models of men's careers. Implications of this approach for research, organizations, and men's careers are discussed.