Understanding Women’s Career Experiences in Moroccan Businesses: A Multi-Level Analysis of Gender Relations

Existing literature on women career development focuses on western industrialized countries and gives little attention to regions where patriarchy is prevailing like in North African countries. The limited available research in the region takes a business-oriented perspective to investigate the topic and focuses on business process optimization for an increased profitability. In an attempt to close this gap, the present book takes a sociological lens to investigate meanings and interpretations that skilled women in Moroccan organizations give to their experiences. This project sought to understand how Moroccan professional women take decisions about their career path while taking a multi-level approach to examine contextual factors. In this book, Bourdieu’s theory of practice was used as a theoretical framework to examine the interplay of the different factors impacting the development of women career paths. Using a qualitative research approach under the interpretivist paradigm, and drawing on in-depth interviews with 10 participants, this research investigated female and male conceptualization of career and work objectives.

Mouna Izelmaden has accumulated several years of experience in marketing, sales and customer service positions in Morocco and Germany with a business administration educational background. Her research interest is to investigate the interplay between social structures and organizational practice with a focus on the topics of gender equality and inclusion.