Career development practices and relevance has changed over the past decades.

Women workforce has increase remarkably as compared to male workforce across the globe. Accordingly, female labor force participation rate worldwide is 52.47 per cent in 2019. This shows that women are also equally entering into the working world as men. Even though the graph portraying number of women participations in workforce keep moving upwardly, however their representation at management level are still low for women development in organizations. This phenomenon gained a lot of attention and given rise to public discussion in worldwide. Statistics shows that corporate hierarchy is inversely related to number of women workforces at the top management. Although progress has been made in many employment areas, number of women remains significantly low at the top management.

The increasing number of women entering into the professional occupations which traditionally dominated by men have triggered the growing interest in the study of women development in organization. Mostly women are involved in the sectors such as health, education and personnel service sector. Due to better academic qualifications, some of them had joined professional careers and management position in both public and private sector organizations. However, researchers have found that there is still existing gap between men and women’s career success that cause many women were unable to reach higher management position due to the perception of men are more capable and effective to be in the decision-making positions. Traditionally, men are perceived to be chosen for high-risk occupation compared to women. Therefore, it reduces the chances for women to do such assignments. However, there are factors associated to women development in organization. 

1. Job Flexibility:

Job flexibility is defined as the flexibility one has on the duration of work, location and amount of work. Job flexibility can be described as authority given to employees to decide on when and where to accomplish their work. It is different from some work arrangements that refer to employer’s ability to change work schedule and lay off employees. Job flexibility is designed to help employees especially women to balance their work and non-work responsibilities. Parents’ application of job flexibility beyond part time, for example adjustable working hours and telecommuting however may help the employer to signal that the workers are striving to merge their job while taking care of their children and elderly without lessening the period of time they occupy at workplace.

Job flexibility benefits career-orientated women to balance between work and family and they will eventually stay in their profession, even when their work is critical. therefore, this will eventually cause more women advancing into the higher management position.

2. Family Culture:

Women development in organization have difficulties to disclose themselves to the employment world due to the cultural values. In the context of women career success, family culture has been examined carefully, particularly in relational to marital status and day-care provider. It has showed that combining both family and career domain may obstruct a women’s career success. According to research have showed that in the West, women managers struggle to build choices, such as staying unmarried or having no children in relation to their male working colleagues, in which most of them are married with children. This is because family culture affected negatively on women career success due to the judgement that being a wife and mother can promote to interruption in their career and they might progress slowly especially for those who women at the higher management level. The study found that family responsibilities and have a significant relationship with the women managers career success.

On the other hand, other culture outside the Western countries, that highlighted the significance of family network, have states that mothership is not an obstacle to women development in organization. Evidence had shown that women who obtain help from their family members face less strain and greater career growth than women who do not get help from their family members because the assistance from family members have affect positively on women’s career success for better performance at work by increasing their positive feelings.

3. Network Support:

According to network support it is defined by action that are aimed at establishing, sustaining and utilizing informal relationship that have the possibility benefits to aid activities of individual that related to work by freely getting access to assets and magnifying accepted advantages. Network support describes typically how regularly people exhibit networking attitude (e.g., discussing business issues outside of employment time, etc.).

It is found that network support has affect on career success due to the accommodation of high networking people tend to control bond, contact and social capital. The study which stated that continuing such network for example, maintaining contacts and participating in experienced activities was positively significant to career success such as promotion. Moreover, social network is determined as mechanism to obtain new knowledge such as guidance of information and route for socialization.

4. Mentoring:

Mentoring is explained as the association between two people where a person with higher position, experienced or skillful leaders, guide and assists another individual to progress and grow one’s both professional and personal life. Throughout the literature, mentoring in the organization helps women managers for advancement in their career. Mentors plays and important role in female managers’ career success as they assist them to develop sense of individuality, professional confidence, minimize discrimination, assist female managers to get information which are accessible to men, provide decision-making authority within the organization and aid their career success.

Research on career success shows that mentoring is a crucial factor to explain the career success of women managers. Mentoring has an interactive and positive association between the more experienced person and less experience person which in turn prompt to career success.