Name: NEIDY APARECIDA CHRISTO PEREIRA
Publication date: 12/12/2025
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ALEXANDRE REIS ROSA | Examinador Interno |
| AMANDA SOARES ZAMBELLI FERRETTI | Examinador Externo |
| CESAR AUGUSTO TURETA DE MORAIS | Presidente |
| FERNANDA MENDES PIRES | Examinador Externo |
| LETICIA DIAS FANTINEL | Examinador Interno |
Summary: 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.
