Career calling as a lens to better understand the success of women in Lebanon -

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to explore notions of career calling as an extreme subjective conception of career success from an agency-structure lens. In doing so, I will also highlight the macro-level cultural factors and personal factors that may affect the success of these Lebanese woman. The project can usefully assume that the framework of career calling can be nuanced to cater specific cultural orientations and be subjectively malleable through looking at both structure and agency when identifying callings. The project is conducted using a confirmatory qualitative methodology, drawn from 21 women in Lebanon that were part of the UNESCO report: Career Guidance from the Grassroots: The Stories of 40 Remarkable Lebanese Female Role Models. The results illustrate that the success of women is driven by the subjective perception of their careers as a calling; patriarchy and urf on a macro-level; and the influence of their personal context. Results show that women’s local realities (i.e. patriarchy, sectarianism, culture, urf, war, and religion, as well as and the family structure and support) shape the women’s careers allowing for a better understanding of constraints to the career calling view in the Lebanese context. Thus developing a calling is one way to express the women’s agency. Most clearly, my results suggest that the notions of career calling are extremely subjective when looking at career success.