Influences of Cultural Values on the Career Barriers and Choices of Hi…

The study of purpose is to explore the career barriers through the process, how the highly educated women choose their career. In particular, the study focuses on humanities and social science area most female preferred, and primarily selected 60 respondents obtaining their doctoral degree with snowball sampling. It also used purposive sampling finally picked 11 respondents with special experiences to change their job at least 2 times. The researchers conducted an in-depth interview to explore their career barriers from the graduate school to the current job position. The study results show that academic interaction with their professors mostly influences the respondents' career development with the doctoral degree before their graduation. Second, after graduation the respondents have experiences on glass ceiling effect dislike school. Third, marriage was a critical issue for both of the single and married female doctoral degree holders with or without child. The married women have high responsibility on their family and child care, and the single recognize themselves as the disadvantaged under Confucian values. This social-cultural context influences the married respondents' career expectation and they depressed or have lower expectation of their career. In this context, their spouse or father affected on their career development. However, social support of their surroundings and their strong sense of purpose help them to overcome their career barriers. The study reveals social-cultural context has high effect on women's career development and choice more than their personal characteristics and talents. It is not easy to generalize the study results because of the limitation of qualitative studies. However, this study is highly valuable to dedicate social-cultural context's impact on the highly educated women's career development and choice. In addition, this study recommend understanding the women's career barriers in the social-cultural context, in order to build a career related policy or career counseling. Finally the study suggest a quantitative research to generalize certain factor influencing career development of the highly educated women for the further research.