PSYCHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF PROFESSIONAL SELF-REALIZATION OF WOMEN SURVIVED A MID-LIFE CRISIS
Authors: S.B. Pashkin , N.B. Lisovskaia , E.P. Korablina , S.M. Shingaev 
Published: July 2023

In a global crisis, it becomes more difficult to cope with personality crises. Women are increasingly faced with stress in the workplace, the work is becoming more difficult, the likelihood of wrong decisions is growing, conflict situations are provoked and, as a result, this affects the results of the organization as a whole, so there is a need to more actively study the issue of professional self-realization of women in the period mid life. The purpose of this study was to identify the psychological characteristics of professional self-realization in women who have experienced a mid-life crisis. The study involved 52 women. The age of the respondents is from 35 to 45 years, which corresponds to the period of middle life. The sample was divided into two subgroups of 26 women who experienced a professional crisis and 26 women who experienced other crises. Most women have an average work experience of 10 years, almost half of the respondents combine work with childcare. To study the psychological characteristics of professional self-realization in women who experienced a mid-life crisis, the following methods were used: the Methodology “Development Crises” by Petryavskaya L.G.; the Test of meaningful life orientations (MLO) by James Crumbo and Leonard Maholik, adapted by Leontiev D.A.; S elf-actualization test (SAT), a variant of the Russian-language adaptation of Shostrom's self-actualization test (adapted by Aleshina Yu.E., Gozman L.Ya., Zagika M.V. and Kroz M.V.); a Short form of Jones and Crandall's Personal Orientation Questionnaire; Methodology "Type and level of professional self-realization" Gavrilova E.A.). In the static processing of the results, descriptive statistics methods and the U-Mann Whitney non-parametric statistical test were used. Statistical data processing was carried out using the STATISTICA 10 software package. The study found that both groups of women note the presence of a large number of problems associated with the professional sphere, such as loss of meaning in work and adaptation to the profession. The main components diagnosed during the analysis were: a feeling of fatigue from work and dissatisfaction with self-realization in work. The process of overcoming the crisis is difficult, regardless of what caused it. The main chosen ways to overcome the crises were: friends, family, children, travel and work, as well as changing the type of activity. Turning to a specialized specialist to solve problems related to crises turns out to be the least popular. Women who have experienced a professional crisis tend to live in the past, they have dissatisfaction with their lives, lack of interest in what is happening around, lack of pleasure from the work performed, lack of desire to set and achieve new goals. In women who have experienced a professional crisis, the resource component of professional self-realization is expressed, which is designed to ensure its procedural side, and non-reflective (imaginary) professional self-realization is expressed. Women in both groups are prone to the qualities of a self-actualizing personality, but at the same time, women who experienced a professional crisis showed weaker aspects of self-acceptance, but at the same time, the ability to concentrate on a given problem compared to women who survived other crises.