How can we understand women's typically incremental approach to career, which defies the goal-oriented career-building logic of management culture? A qualitative study of 40 women in banking explored this issue with 20 clerical workers and 20 managers. In the context of banking policies for equal opportunities, career breaks, management trainee schemes, some respondents described career goals and development in traditional terms, but most acknowledged their difference from perceived norms. Organisational hierarchies, traditional male career grooming, and the long hours culture, as well as accommodation to other family members are seen to stand in the way of long-term goal-setting. Incrementalism and credit accumulation are rational approaches to uncertainty about family relationships and needs, a high risk of failure to reach male-dominated positions, and the heavy demands of combining a managerial career with motherhood. What kind of aspiration, norm, or ideal gives direction and other specific guidance to a soprano, the impossible aspiration to hit a note six octaves above the highest note ever sung or the resolve to reach A above high-C? (Lindblom, 1979, p. 518)
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