Career constructions and a feminist standpoint on the meaning of context

Abstract

This paper explores how context shapes the career constructions of 40 Lebanese female professionals. Starting with career construction theory (CCT), we leverage feminist standpoint theory (FST) to propose a hybrid analytic framework. With this framework, we invite CCT researchers to theorize career constructions as situated. The situatedness of career constructions calls for the exploration of an individual's career choices, coupled with the simultaneous potential constraints on choice emanating from collective experiences of historical and sociopolitical oppression. Theorizing contextual complexities in this way leads to a more nuanced tracing of how the personal experiences of challenge, and for some, the oppressive aspects of collective histories are selectively used to construct a cohesive sense of career storied self, each with distinctive implications for the domains of CCT—Vocational Personality (the what), Career Adaptability (the how), and Life Theme (the why). Our analysis reveals three key patterns: (1) advancing the professional field (vocational expert), (2) seeking self-vindication (adaptive rebel), and (3) engaging in activism (sympathetic activist vs. epistemically privileged activist). We conclude by discussing the value of our framework, thereby highlighting how acknowledging situatedness helps to inform our understandings of career patterns and of the “politicization” of career trajectories. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.