Perceived Gender Discrimination and Women’s Subjective Career Success: The Moderating Role of Career Anchors

Abstract

Subjective career success has beneficial consequences on several individual and organizational outcomes. It is closely related to what people value as important at work, but may be more difficult to achieve when they experience workplace discrimination. Using a sample of 300 women employees working in a large French company, we thus investigated the relationship between perceived gender discrimination, subjective career success and career anchors. We found that perceived gender discrimination was negatively related to subjective career success overall. However, the relationship between the two variables was moderated by career anchors. Some anchors (i.e. managerial, technical and lifestyle) enhanced the impact of perceived gender discrimination, while other anchors (i.e. security and autonomy) lessened it. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings