Clara Selva

Gender and professional trajectories: management life stories

The purpose of this paper is to define the gender aspects regarded as relevant in a woman’s career, as well as the situations or elements, which are narrated, as an experience of success or failure in their professional development.,Through an approach similar to life stories and a longitudinal phenomenological perspective analysis, the author identifies the experiences and feelings of nine women who, in 1998, occupied mid-level positions.,The stories offer a reading of the trajectory at three different levels: the working environment, the experience undergone and the principles of action developed through their careers. These stories show and demonstrate that gender and subjectivity are intertwined, enacted upon and reproduced in the workplace.,Despite having collected information on two occasions, allowing us to reconstruct their paths and isolate the gender issues from this set, this is not a purely longitudinal research as it includes a longitudinal phenomenological perspective.,The stories have helped to weave the experiences and feelings of more than a decade of professional development and have shown how subjectivity is committed to a world of prescriptions and proscriptions that confers differences applicable to both sexes, where being a woman explains some of the ways in which female roles are understood and interpreted in relation to themselves and their environment.,El proposito de esta investigacion es delimitar los aspectos de genero que se relatan como relevantes en la trayectoria profesional de la mujer, asi como las situaciones o elementos que se narran como una experiencia de exito o fracaso en su desarrollo profesional.,Mediante un abordaje proximo a las historias de vida y a traves de una perspectiva de analisis fenomenologica-longitudinal, nos aproximamos a las experiencias, vivencias y sentimientos de nueve mujeres que en 1998 ocupaban posiciones de mando medio.,Los relatos nos presentan una lectura de la trayectoria a tres planos: el entorno laboral, la experiencia vivida y los principios de accion desarrollados a lo largo de su carrera. Estos relatos, muestran y demuestran que el genero y la subjetividad se entrelazan, promulgan y reproducen en el entorno laboral.,A pesar de recoger informacion en dos momentos, lo que ha permitido reconstruir sus trayectorias y aislar de este conjunto los aspectos de genero, no se trata de una investigacion puramente longitudinal sino con cierta perspectiva fenomenologica-longitudinal.,Los relatos han permitido tejer las vivencias y sentimientos de mas de una decada de desarrollo profesional y han evidenciado como la subjetividad se compromete con un mundo de prescripciones y proscripciones que confiere diferencias para aplicar a ambos sexos. Donde ser mujer explica ciertas formas de entender e interpretar los roles femeninos, en relacion a ellas mismas y a su entorno.