Choices or Constraints? Applying the Kaleidoscope Career Model to the Careers of Female Doctors in China

Wang, Shuo (2020) Choices or Constraints? Applying the Kaleidoscope Career Model to the Careers of Female Doctors in China. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

This thesis sheds light on the career experiences of female medical professionals in China. The study of women’s careers has received increasing attention with an increasing emphasis on the rights and status of women in China, women’s employment and career development have broken through the traditional shackles of inherently sexist and biased values. Women have more equal opportunities at work and have entered multiple specialized occupations. In particular, improvements in specialist medical departments and the development of medicine in China have given women more opportunities to enter the traditionally male-dominated medical professions.
Using the Kaleidoscope Career Model (KCM) as a theoretical framework, I undertook semi-structured interviews with 23 participants (16 female doctors and seven female nurses) working in a private hospital in Shanghai. The interviews explored their medical careers to date, and starting from their decision to study medicine. Analysis of the interview transcripts identified three key areas of discussion common to all interviews – occupational choices and ongoing career choices, organizational problems/pressures, and family issues/work-life balance. The thesis focuses on three research questions: how do female doctors make decisions about their occupational choices and ongoing career choices; what organizational barriers or problems constrain their medical career advancement; and how do family issues and work responsibilities interact to affect their medical career development?
Given that the participants of this research were highly educated women in China who are working in a prestigious profession, the apparent lack of agency in their accounts is striking. Kaleidoscope Career Model offers an essential theoretical framework for this thesis to explore the interviewed Chinese female medical professionals’ authenticity, balance, and their need to be challenged in making choices about their work and family. Also, this thesis offers the possible ways that how do Chinese hospitals make efforts to attract and maintain talent female professionals through supporting their authenticity, balance and challenge needs towards medical work? The limitation of this research and future agenda also provided in the thesis.

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