Women's Professional Identity Formation in the Free/Open Source Software Community

We examine the formation of women’s professional identity in a particular type of male-dominated domain, the free and open source software development communities, and more broadly in information technology. Through an ethnographic analysis of interviews and online forums discussions, we find that women experience two types of discrepancies or gaps that constitute obstacles in the process of identity formation: an image gap and an identity gap. We show the strategies employed by women as they attempt to bridge these gaps; we also find that some of these strategies, while tackling one gap, may also deepen the other.Gender; Identity Formation; Self-presentation

Secure-base Relationships as Drivers of Professional Identity Development in Dual-career Couples

Through a qualitative study of 50 dual-career couples, we examine how partners in such couples shape the development of each other’s professional identities and how they experience and interpret the relationship between those identities. We found that the extent to which and how partners shaped each other’s professional identities depended on the couple’s attachment structure, that is, whether one partner—or both—experienced the other as a secure base. Someone comes to regard another person as a secure base when he or she experiences the other as both dependably supportive and encouraging of his or her exploratory behavior. Couples who had a unidirectional secure-base structure experienced conflict between the development of their professional identities. The partner who received a secure base pursued ongoing professional identity development, while the partner who provided a secure base foreclosed it. Couples who had a bidirectional secure-base structure experienced mutual enhancement of their professional identity development. Both partners engaged in it and expanded their professional identity by incorporating attributes of their partner’s. Building on these findings, we develop a model of professional identity co-construction in secure-base relationships that breaks new theoretical ground by exploring interpersonal identity relationships and highlighting their roots in the secure-base structure of a dyadic relationship

Forgone, but not forgotten: Toward a theory of forgone professional identities

Through an inductive, qualitative study, I developed a process model of how people deal with professional identities they have forgone by choice or constraint. I show that, when forgone professional identities are linked to unfulfilled values, people look for ways to enact them and retain them in the self-concept. I further identify three strategies that people use to enact foregone professional identities: (1) real enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity through real activities and social interactions either at work or during leisure time), (2) imagined enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity through imagined activities and interactions, either in an alternate present or in the future), and (3) vicarious enactment (i.e., enacting the forgone identity by observing and imagining close others enacting it and internalizing these experiences). These findings expand our conceptualization of professional identity beyond identities enacted through activities and interactions that are part of formal work roles, and illuminate the key role of imagination and vicarious experiences in identity construction and maintenance

DS_10.1177_0001839218783174 – Supplemental material for Secure-base Relationships as Drivers of Professional Identity Development in Dual-career Couples

<p>Supplemental material, DS_10.1177_0001839218783174 for Secure-base Relationships as Drivers of Professional Identity Development in Dual-career Couples by Jennifer Louise Petriglieri and Otilia Obodaru in Administrative Science Quarterly</p