We are grateful to Katharina von Knobloch who conducted an interesting research on a topic we have much at heart: female expats career abroad. In this article she shares the experience.
Have you ever wondered what female expats who chose to live and work abroad manage to thrive professionally? Do you ask yourself how they manage to balance family planning and international career decisions? Well, I was asking myself that. And I also wondered why it is 2022 and the majority of traditional corporate assignments are still vastly men.
So, I took matters into my own hands and interviewed 30 women around the world who all had one thing in common: They are abroad because of their careers. Not because their partner was sent abroad and they decided to join and while doing so found their own professional purpose. No, this time, I purposely focused on the female breadwinner who came home with this offer of their employer to move abroad and discussed it with her family at the kitchen table. Or the woman who felt stuck in her career and went abroad to rise the career ladder. Or the woman who wanted to work AND have children but her home country did not offer the social acceptance nor the infrastructure to actually make it work.
I had the honor to interview 30 very fascinating, incredibly confident, and inspiring women and ask them very personal and intimate questions. To my surprise, they shared very openly about their struggles and their personal approach, and the result of all that is a comprehensive study that I decided to provide for free here. In this article, I want to summarize a few of the key findings that I find remarkable.
Breaking through the global class ceiling can become a habit
Once you break through the glass ceiling in your home country, you are not afraid of the global class ceiling. The fact that these women are female did not interfere in their daily business as much as I would have anticipated. This was much more a topic in their home country, and after creating a strategy to deal with it, they copied that strategy for their time abroad. They mastered gender-biased situations with confidence and persistence.
You do not have to be a career woman to thrive internationally
By far, not all women thriving professionally abroad are career women. While climbing the corporate ladder was a motivation for many, the reasons to move overseas are manifold, and the ratio of the very ambitious career woman was much lower than expected. In the study, I explain the different approaches of career planning, and while about 60% of the participants followed an alpha career with lots of ambition and focus on work, about 40% were following a beta career with pauses and phases with fewer responsibilities.
Female Expats mind their own business
Compared to what I often observe with the accompanying Expat Partner, the Female Expat is way less concerned about the opinions of family and friends back home. They have often chosen a very different life model compared to their parents or friends and learned to live by their own definition of a happy life.
The support of the partner is crucial
For women with children, the majority of the partners put back their own career ambitions to support the Female Expat. Only very few Female Expats reported managing without the support of the partner. The majority would not be able, nor willing to live this life with both partners engaged in a global career. It either needs a comprehensive support network, a rather non-linear career path, or the full support of the partner to make it work. The perspectives of the single global mums have been incredibly inspiring.
The four personas
After talking to 30 women, I realized that there are specific patterns in their stories that are repetitive. I have been able to extract four different personas with very different motivations to move abroad and very different tactics:
- The adventure seeker: The brave and curious woman who has a desire for global adventures
- The career woman: The ambitious woman who pushes her career to the max
- The changemaker: The resourceful, energetic woman who uses the global lifestyle as a facilitator
- The expat by chance: The cautious woman who happened to find herself abroad and turn it into an opportunity
Of course, there are many nuances and very different perspectives within those 30 stories. But my personal learning from my conversations with these women has been that there is a very broad spectrum of what is possible and achievable. One woman chose to move continents and switch employers as a single parent with a 4-months old baby. Another woman worked in a country where the fact that she was in love with another woman was under the death penalty. The list goes on with exciting stories and perspectives, and by sharing those stories, I want to contribute to making this world a happier place to live and inspire others to follow their dreams. If you are curious about the study, you can download it for free here.
About the author:
Katharina von Knobloch (Kate) is a certified coach with a focus on career planning for expat partners. She gained her own experience as an expat partner in Chicago and today supports women around the world in the adventure of expatriation and career reorientation abroad and upon return to the home country. She shares studies and workbooks on re-entry and global career planning at www.sharethelove.blog and offers group and individual coaching.
February 2022
Main pic: Unsplash
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