Women's career interruptions: an integrative review

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this integrative literature review was three-fold: to explore the phenomenon of women’s career interruptions as revealed by publications in the past two decades, to propose a new career decision tree model (CDTM) and to outline an agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopted the integrative literature review approach proposed by Torraco (2005, 2016) and used a mind mapping application called MindMeister to synthesize 64 identified articles. Findings The proposed CDTM can assist those who are interested in exploring individuals’ career decisions to think systematically about career influencers at different levels. Originality/value The CDTM is significantly different from existing career models and theories in that it explains women’s career interruptions in a context-sensitive manner. This model can assist human resource development professionals in analyzing the influencers of women’s career decisions and tackling individual problems level by level.