Neither-nor: career success of women in an Arab Middle Eastern context
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-03-2014-0028 |
| Published date | 03 August 2015 |
| Date | 03 August 2015 |
| Pages | 525-546 |
| Author | Hayfaa Tlaiss |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations |
Neither-nor: career success of
women in an Arab Middle
Eastern context
Hayfaa Tlaiss
Faculty of Business, University of New Brunswick,
Saint John, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –Few studies examine the career success of women in the Arab Middle East. With that in
mind, the purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualizations of the career success of women
managers in Lebanon. Drawing on the individual, behavioral, and structural approaches, this study
also investigates the women’s approaches to career success. Capitalizing on the institutional theory
(IT), the current investigation accounts for the complexity of the local context by illustrating how
a diverse set of socio-cultural values and norms, institutional constraints, and individual agency
impact the overall experience of career success among Arab women.
Design/methodology/approach –This study is exploratory in nature and draws on a qualitative
approach. In-depth, face-to-face, open-ended interviews were conducted with women managers across
the managerial hierarchyin a wide range of industries, sectors, and organizations.
Findings –The findings suggest that the Lebanese women managers’career success was not
conceptualizedexclusively using the objective or thesubjective measures. Rather, it wasconceptualized
on a continuum between these measures, thus challenging the rigid objective/subjective dichotomy in
the context of Lebanon. The results also suggest that the career success of these women managers
is better predicted and explained by the individual and behavioral approaches than by the traditional,
structural approach.This empirical work sheds light on the gendered working conditions that women
experience and how they capitalize on their individual agency to survive the hegemonic masculinity
embedded in their workplaces, along with the inequalities that it promotes.
Originality/value –This study is the first to explore the conceptualizations and the determinants
of the career success of women managers in Lebanon. However, the originality of this paper is not only
limited to its contribution to the limited research on the careers of Arab women; it also extends to its
usage of various approaches to predict career success as well as to adapt IT as a theoretical framework
for capturing the myriad of factors that impact women’s careers and success. The originality of this
study also lies in advancing the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity into studies looking
at Arab women’s career experiences by shedding some light on how the reproduction of gender,
gendered working practices, and agency impact their career success.
Keywords Women, Lebanon, Career success, Gender inequality, Arab Middle East,
Hegemonic masculinity
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Despite the widespread scholarly interest in and extensive research on managerial
careers and career success in Anglo-Saxon countries, little attention has been paid
to the conceptualizations of the career success of managers in developing, Arab Middle
Eastern (AME) countries. This unevenness of attention (Ituma et al., 2011) has created
a serious gap in our knowledge of career success, particularly as more studies suggest
that careers are not free of the social context in which they unfold (Melamed, 1996;
Ituma et al., 2011) and that the meaning of career success is socially constructed
(Mayrhofer et al., 2004; Gunz and Heslin, 2005; Chudzikowski et al., 2009; Dries, 2011).
Hence, career scholars have increasingly called for more country-specific career studies
Employee Relations
Vol. 37 No. 5, 2015
pp. 525-546
©Emerald Group Publis hing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-03-2014-0028
Received 20 March 2014
Revised 24 July 2014
22 September 2014
Accepted 23 September 2014
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
525
Career success
of women in
an AME
context
(Ituma et al., 2011) that discover how career success unfolds in different social settings
(Mayrhofer et al., 2004; Gunz and Heslin, 2005) and how its construction is a culturally
specific process.
To attend to this knowledge gap and in response to these scholarly calls, the current
study explores the nature of women managers’career success in a non-western, AME
locale, namely, Lebanon. To achieve its objectives, the current study draws on the
institutional theory (IT) as its main theoretical framework as it demonstrates how the
conceptualization of career success is affected by the symbiosis and interdependency
of the cognitive-culture, normative, and regulative factors within Lebanese contexts.
The interest in women managers is rooted in: first, this study’s interest in gender
inequality, particularly as women managers are perceived as actors in the reproduction
of inequality in western (Cohen et al., 2009) and Arab (Tlaiss, 2014) contexts; and
second, the strong links made between masculinity and managerial careers in the Arab
world, given the masculine nature of its culture, norms, beliefs, and values (Hutchings
et al., 2010, 2012; Tlaiss, 2014). Ultimately, leaning on the lens of hegemonic
masculinity, the current study argues that the career success of Lebanese women
managers is on a continuum between the objective and the subjective measures as it is
impacted by the gendered working conditions and inherent inequalities, including
gender, at the larger societal level. The findings also reflect on the Arab women’s
agency –through their resistance to and complicity with the gendered working
practices –in their conceptualizations of career success.
Research context: Lebanon in light of the IT and hegemonic masculinity
Hughes (1937) argued that a proper understanding of career success involves an
understanding of the structures and institutions of societies and how they impact the
manner in which individuals experience or define this construct. In the following section,
we will set the stage for this exploratory study by reviewing the societal and
organizational factors that impact the careers of women in Lebanon by leveraging the IT
(Scott, 1995, 2001, 2005) as a theoretical framework. Scott (2005) defines institutions
as social structures withhigh levels of flexibility. They comprise three pillars that provide
meaning and support to social life. While the cultural-cognitive pillar refers to the social
production and interpretation of national cultures and traditions within institutions, the
regulatory pillar refers to rules and laws that control the functioning of these institutions.
The normative pillar highlights the norms and beliefs in these institutions, along with the
standards of behavior of individuals operating within them (Scott, 1995, 2001, 2005).
Recent studies argue that Lebanese women have made significant strides in
educational attainment levels and workforce participation. For example, women
in Lebanon constitute more than 50 percent of the university student population (World
Bank, 2005). They are also strongly represented in a number of sectors, including
education and health and social services, where they constitute more than 50 percent
of the workforce in both sectors. Despite their impressive educational attainments
and increased invo lvement in the local w orkforce, Lebane se women remain
under-represented in the labor market as their participation is at one of the lowest
rates of female labor participation in the world (Freedom House, 2010). Moreover, when
and if employed, Lebanese women face gender discrimination, particularly at the
management level. Leaning on the cultural-cognitive pillar of the IT and Hofstede’s
(2001) cultural taxonomy, the Arab culture is patriarchal, highly collective, and
masculine with gender roles that are firmly distinguished and defined. The private
and public domains are shaped by a traditional gender ideology that expec ts men to
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