This study follows over 200 women making employment and family choices during their first decade after college graduation. Based on interview responses, the authors organize the women into four life choice categories: Careerists, Homemakers, Breadwinners, and Nesters. Using models of adult change as well as extensive quotes and empirical analyses, the authors identify the facilitators and barriers for each alternative. Women relate the consequences of each choice for themselves, their spouses, and their children. While each group faced unique problems, in all groups, women were satisfied with career and family aspects of their choices if they followed their individual values, found supportive friends, coworkers and spouses, and if they worked in those rare challenging jobs in family-supportive organizations. The book explores the ways women, spouses, counselors, and employers can facilitate satisfying life choices and how to anticipate the questions each group faces in their next decade.

This work uses theoretical, qualitative and quantitative information to describe individual careers and organizational career practices of managers employed in financial services, petrochemical, manufacturing, and government organizations in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Asian scholars clarify career patterns in Asian and U.S. firms and offer suggestions useful for human resource managers of firms operating in East Asia. Quotations of managers describing their career aspirations and experiences are combined with quantitative descriptions of larger samples to provide unique, detailed descriptions of organizational and individual careers. These rich, complex accounts will be useful to all Asian scholars, human resource managers of firms conducting business in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and professors of management studying human resource practices worldwide.