PATHWAYS TO WOMEN'S CAREER SUCCESS: CAREER TRANSITIONS, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND CAREER OPTIMISM AS A CATALYST TOWARD SUCCESS

Women’s careers are often described as complex and fragmented due to the complexities they encounter while balancing work and life priorities. This balancing act leads many women to follow a self-directed career path, on their quest to attain their personal conception of career success. This dissertation argues that although contemporary career theories attempt to explain women’s career thinking, there is still a gap in offering sufficient support resources to assist a woman while navigating the challenges she encounters in a dynamic and complex business environment. This study explores this argument through a stream of inquiry on women’s careers. Career transitions, the protean career attitude, career optimism, and subjective career success were explored from the lens of women navigating the contemporary work environment. A conceptual model for women’s career transitions was introduced, in addition to an empirical exploration of African American women’s career transitions to entrepreneurship. Further, a hypothesized model of the relationship between the dimensions of the protean career attitude, career optimism, and subjective career success was tested with a sample of U.S. women. Finally, implications for research, practice, and society are discussed.