Cinquentei, e daí? mulheres após os 50 anos e suas estratégias de enfrentamento das barreiras de carreira
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Data
2025-12-12
Autores
Pereira, Neidy Aparecida Christo
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Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo
Resumo
This doctoral dissertation investigates how women aged 50 and over face career barriers and construct strategies of continuity and reinvention throughout their professional trajectories. Adopting a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the study analyzes 51 in-depth interviews, grounded in the protean career theory and in a critical articulation between gender and age. The findings indicate that the career trajectories of women aged 50+ are shaped by persistent tensions between agency and structure, expressed through ambivalences such as resistance and prudence, visibility and protection, self-care and symbolic penalization. The analytical categories — career barriers, coping strategies, and work–life balance — reveal that protean self-direction manifests as a situated, negotiated, and relational practice, deeply influenced by ongoing forms of sexism and ageism within organizational contexts. Participants reframe psychological success as a hybrid experience in which meaning, coherence, and purpose coexist with the need for minimal institutional recognition to sustain professional legitimacy and self-esteem. The main theoretical contribution of the study lies in the formulation of the concept of critical protean career, which reconceptualizes self-direction as a practice of political and emotional wisdom, exercised under symbolic and structural constraints. The dissertation also introduces ambivalence as a transversal explanatory category, demonstrating that the actions of mature women are continuously shaped by negotiations between freedom and constraint. Furthermore, it shows that coping strategies operate as relational orchestrations, combining individual resources (self-knowledge, continuous learning, and emotional management) with collective resources (sorority, networks, mentoring, and intergenerational alliances). By integrating situated agency, protean career theory, and the articulation between gender and age, this study expands the understanding of women’s careers in later adulthood and highlights the urgency of organizational policies aimed at combating ageism, recognizing productive longevity as a strategic asset, and fostering inclusive environments for women aged 50 and over.
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Mulheres 50+ , Barreiras de carreira; , Carreira proteana , Agência situada , Estratégias de enfrentamento , Longevidade produtiva