Career disruptions of married women in India: an exploratory investigation

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article was to investigate how educated Indian women experience career disruptions after marriage. Women make up nearly half of India’s population and hold more advanced degrees compared to men. However, women make up less than 20% of India’s workforce and married women are especially underrepresented in the workforce. This article explored the paradoxical relationship between educated Indian women and their low workforce participation. In this qualitative inquiry, we focused on factors that defined their career continuity or disruption, through an interpretive qualitative inquiry. Our findings indicate that married Indian women have low autonomy over their career-related decisions, and they largely depend on support from their husbands and his family to continue their careers. In addition, due to social conditioning, women internalize their gender roles and identity as mothers and wives and choose to give up their careers. We present the implications of our findings for theory, research, and practice in human resource development.

KEYWORDS:

• Career disruption
• career development
• career continuity
• married women
• educated women
• India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).