The Career Stories of LGB-Q in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to delineate the career stories of LGB-Q in Turkey. The research questions looked at here are as follows: (1) What are their childhood career aspirations? (2) What are the important features that they care about at workplace? (3) How does their gender orientation impact their career development? (4) What kind of social support resources do they have according to which stages are they at the coming out process? (5) What are their future career aspirations? (6) What are their career needs? To this end, life story inquiry, a qualitative data analysis method, was used in this study. A total of seven LGB-Q people participated in the study. The study revealed that participants’ sexual orientation is influential in their career development, that LGB-Q people do not openly live their identities in Turkey and that they are faced with many pressures of society.

KEYWORDS:

• LGB-Q
• career choices
• career stories
• life story inquiry
• career counseling
• career barriers
• Turkey
• non-Western society

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Feyza Dincel Aktas.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.