The constant changes in the world scenario, especially to the new social standards and lifestyle of the population, have made research aimed at career and gender gain strength (Stefanović & Stošić, 2012). This is even more relevant regarding women's work, especially the transition from formal employment to self-employment, which can be stimulated by barriers that women encounter in the labor market, leading them to rethink their careers within organizations (McGowan, Redeker, Cooper, & Greenan, 2012).

Each professional has their own process of career transition and the evolution to entrepreneurial practices leads to the need to know their challenges and profiles (Vinnicombe & Bank, 2003). Highlighting women's entrepreneurship is not recent (Hirisch, 1986), neither is recognizing the importance of a deeper understanding and identification of causes in mobility in women's careers (Metz, 2005).

It should be noted that the gender issue in organizations has been addressed in the literature in several areas, such as: the perception that organizations are not gender neutral (Acker, 1990); the construction of the feminine identity in the work environment impacts the development of their careers in certain organizational conditions (Ely, 1995); there are pioneer women occupying organizational positions historically considered masculine (Acker, 2008); and gender constraints imply career consequences for men and women, including in the capitalist arena and globalization (Acker, 2004).

It is also important to highlight the importance of feminist and multicultural approaches in management research (Cerchiaro, Ayrosa, & Zouain, 2009). According to Cálas & Smirich (1999), to understand contemporary society and its organizations, it is necessary to recognize the historical condition of oppression of women and to introduce their points of view into organizational discussions.

Although several studies show the salience of exogenous stimuli to women's professional mobility (Kumra & Vinnicombe, 2008; Guillaume & Pohic, 2009; Carvalho Neto, Tanure, & Andrade, 2010; Oltramari & Grisci, 2014), it is argued that a more subjective and endogenous stimulus is underestimated and relevant to be explored.

Even with the significant increase in studies on female entrepreneurship, including Brazilian production on the subject, those studies were stuck to an approach of competency analysis and the characteristics present in the way of managing women, often limiting to present a profile of the entrepreneurial woman (Gomes, Santana, Araújo, & Martins, 2014). Thus, in the face of the growth of female entrepreneurship, academic literature has paid little attention to the social and cultural factors that are intrinsic to the family environment and that lead to a career change for women (Røsen, 2014). There is evidence that women's motivations to self-employment are different from those of men, with women affected, mainly, by family concerns and men with larger monetary gains opportunity (Allen & Curington, 2014).

Additionally, gender segregation in the labor market still exists and ultimately stimulates women to self-employment (Zhang & Pan, 2012). However there are still doubts about the causal relationship between self-employment among women and the work situation (workload and self-employment) of their partners (Røsen, 2014). Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify stimuli that lead women to choose to leave a formal job and a career on the rise and migrate to self-employment. We can observe that an increase in the academic interest on the proposed theme would correct "historical inattention to women's entrepreneurial activity" (Hughes, Jennings, Brush, Carter, & Welter, 2012, p. 430).

For a long time, society has used the biological difference argument to explain inequality between men and women in the labor market, for considering women as incapable (Amorim & Batista, 2012). However, studies showed that boys have slower development and are "lagging behind" (Eliote, 2010).

In Brazil, in 2015, the population was composed of 51.6% of women and 48.4% of men, with women accounting for 43.8% of the economically active population and about 61.8% of employed women are between 25 and 49 years of age. The growth of female schooling is a factor that is being consolidated. Considering the population aged 25 years and over, the average number of years of schooling among women is 8.1 years, whereas among men it is 7.7 years. It is also noteworthy to mention, data pointing to women as references (livelihood providers) to 40.5% of families (IBGE, 2015).

The literature on business administration has addressed the issue of the construction of female identity in the workplace, impacting the development of their careers in certain organizational conditions (Ely, 1995). The pioneering of women occupying male-dominated organizational positions, including in academia, is still the subject of recent studies (Acker, 2008), notably through the perception that organizations are not gender neutral (Acker, 1990). Gender constraints can have consequences on the career of men and women in organizations, including in the capitalist arena and globalization (Acker, 2004).

It is also pertinent to emphasize the importance of feminist and multicultural approaches in management research (Cerchiaro et al., 2009), that is, giving prominence to rejected or stereotyped voices present in management's mainstream literature. In the case of male/emale dualism, questioning the association between the supposed objectivity of men and the supposed subjectivity of women, which leads them to have their roles minimized in organizations (Calás & Smircich, 1999). Also, according to Cálas and Smirich (1999), to understand contemporary society, one must recognize the historical condition of oppression of women and introduce their points of view in the organizational studies.

A careful look at the situation of women in companies registers the feminization of management functions (Guillaume & Pochic, 2009). In this scenario, women are in the challenge of reconciling work and home. Thus, self-employment appears as a career alternative, standing out for the apparent benefit of allowing greater control over the time and professional future (Lindo, Cardoso, Rodrigues, & Wetzel, 2007).

Changes in the labor market, especially the migration of women who leave private companies and seek self-employment, have become the target of several studies (Stefanović & Stošić, 2012; Amorim & Batista, 2012; Vale, Serafim, & Teodósio, 2011; Okafor & Amalu, 2010; Minniti, 2010; Jonathan, 2005), but concrete indications about the real stimuli that drive women to make such a move are still insufficient (Røsen, 2014; Allen & Curington, 2014).

The narratives of women are placed in different orders, being responsible for the change of the subject and constituting the feminine identity, being submissive to specific moments in their history and "harboring particular experiences, emotions and cultural experiences that allow the social construction of the subjectivity of women" (Vieira, 2005, p. 2010). Taking this context into a subjective organizational narrative, Vasconcelos, Mascarenhas, and Zacarelli (2006) point out perceptions of the social actors in the conditions of change, that cause a reconstruction of the meaning of their experiences, from the mutations that they experience in the succession of their days.

Men and women experience leadership positions differently in such a way that men's careers tend to be linear, while those of women are characterized by interruptions and exits (Ezzedeen & Ritchey, 2009). In addition, women are not reaching the top of business management, despite having similar educational levels - referring to the "glass ceiling" phenomenon. Such difficulty may lead them to rethink their careers within formal organizations (Kumra & Vinnicombe, 2008). Paradoxically, Marques and Moreira (2011) show that, in the labor market, there is a significant increase in female presence.

Another difficulty encountered by women in the labor market relates to sexuality and the fear of its misuse in the organizational environment. There is a prejudice against women who reach senior positions either by supposedly, having benefited from their sexuality, or whether by adopting a masculine behavior (Carvalho Neto et al., 2010).

In a competitive labor market, those who seek professional growth and aim to build a career in high-management positions, feel the need to "considerably increase their workload as well as their responsibilities" (Oltramari & Grisci, 2014, p. 18). Positions at high levels of seniority also require a high degree of functional and geographical mobility. The woman who manages her career for ascending growth encounters this scenario and finds it difficult to combine paid and unpaid work in the current models of horizontal promotion (Guillaume & Pohic, 2009).

A more subjective view of contemporary organizations indicates that in the management of constant change people begin to "make attempts to explore new opportunities and establish a new balance, to redefine oneself through a process of self-examination" (Silva & Vergara, 2003, p. 14). The first work and family conflicts occurred when women began to share their role as mother and housewife with labor market activities, emphasizing the incompatibility, in some respects, of such conflicts (Parasuraman & Greenhaus, 1997).

The contemporary workforce is characterized by a significant increase in women, in couples of dual incomes and with children, which implies needs related to time, work configuration and roles in the family (Piszczek & Berg, 2014; Lindo et al., 2007). Such difficulties are not only felt by women, although they are intensified in them, according to the social variables and responsibilities they occupy (Ferreira & Nogueira, 2013).

Studies on boundaryless assume that organizations are no longer able to offer workers stability in employment and progressive careers, evolving towards the end of traditional careers (Rodrigues & Guest, 2010). The search for boundaryless careers is the possibility of greater flexibility, the supposed disappearance of rigid work structures and hierarchical career paths (Briscoe & Hall, 2006 apud Rodrigues & Guest, 2010).

Studies by Grady and McCarthy (2008) highlight that working mothers were looking for an occupation that gave them more time to balance the equation "work, family and personal well-being". Moreover, in the studies by Carvalho Neto et al. (2010), the possibility that the female professional failure has a lower weight than the male is stressed.

Work can be a way for the female gender to resist male attacks on their identity, since the prestige within this capitalist market lies in who holds the economic superiority, which may lead women to try to reconcile their profession with housework, since the woman who does not work is destined to the role of being supported, of subjugation to the power of the husband or partner (Vieira, 2005).

On the other hand, the struggle of women to equate men's work is not benefiting them, but by masculinizing them, and the fact that women work in equal numbers of hours and with the same functions and responsibilities as men are not necessarily liberating them, but keeping them in double working hours (Vieira, 2005). The structure of organizations today is often the consequence of a model in which managers and leaders forget or ignore the lives of employees outside of work (Kreiner, Hollensbe, & Sheep, 2009).

In this scenario, the feeling of guilt emerges (Carvalho Neto et al., 2010). Some working mothers adopt individual tactics in building a better work-home balance, in view of the difficulty in reconciling family activities with their careers (Araujo et al., 2015). Women, besides the activities inherent to their position in a company, have large domestic responsibilities and they need "to seek strategies to mitigate the conflicts between these important instances of their lives" (Lindo et al., 2007).

Grady and McCarthy (2008) emphasize the feeling of motherhood, in which the children are the number one priority, without leaving aside the career, coexisting with the search for stimuli, challenges, achievements and enrichment. The belief that a woman's ambition disappears when children arrive is denied by Dikkers et al. (2010).

The search for entrepreneurship is not necessarily a greater challenge or result of guilt, but it can also be an attempt to construct a new identity in the face of external changes and also as a form of social transformation (Vasconcelos et al., 2006; Vieira, 2005).

Entrepreneurship can be an alternative for women who become mothers and seek to reconcile motherhood and career, "one of the possible routes to the labor market" (Marques & Moreira, 2011, p. 433), i.e., an alternative of career transition. Maternity can influence the perception of the career transition from the corporate world to self-employment (Lewis, 2015).

Entrepreneurship and self-employment are often listed and cited as complementary (Robalo, 2015) or as two interconnected concepts, treated in the imaginary of the population as synonyms, without clear distinction between the two terms (Silva & Vergara, 2003). The word entrepreneurship is derived from the French "entreprendre", conceptualizing entrepreneurship as the force of making happen, of generating something new (Dornelas, 2008). However, we can perceive that the word entrepreneurship has a broader meaning and is related to several themes besides the creation of companies, often being used to conceptualize personal characteristics (Ferreira, Santos, Serra, & Reis, 2010). The entrepreneur can also be the employee who develops innovative practices in a company, also called intrapreneur (Drucker, 1994). For the purposes of this study, we used the term self-employment as described by Robalo (2015), as referring to those who are self-employed, who do not necessarily generate innovative ventures. In this case, considering Singh and DeNoble (2003), self-employment is characterized as a simpler form of entrepreneurship.

Stimulus and motivation of these women for self-employment can vary significantly. This is what Okafor and Amalu (2010) point out when they listed factors such as frustration, dissatisfaction at work, divorce, boredom, search for independence, autonomy, education and family security.

Mainiero and Sullivan (2005) claim that qualified women, with high potential for management positions, have been leaving the corporate sphere, causing alarm and at the same time generating controversy. They are well-trained women who choose not to pursue a formal corporate career. At this point, the careers of these women are compared to a kaleidoscope that "produces the change of patterns when the tube is rotated and its glass chips fall into new arrangements" (Mainiero & Sullivan, 2005, p. 106).

Earlier studies on female entrepreneurship pointed out that the main motivations for women to open their own business were the same as for men: success, independence, economic reward and job satisfaction (Schwartz, 1976). Regarding the barriers, the fact of not having a partner at the time of setting up a business seems to have a positive influence on the ambition to start it (Akehurst, Simarro, & Mas-Tur, 2012). Entrepreneurial stimuli are more manifest when family support exists, as well as when the spouse or any close family member already owns a business (Akehurst et al., 2012). The stimuli and motives in opening their own business among women result more from the influence of another person (21%) in relation to men (7%) (Vale et al., 2011).

A research conducted with ten entrepreneur women who recently had left managerial positions in large UK companies to start their own ventures, also revealed the anxiety they had to advance their careers as businesswomen, even having companies interested in keeping these women on their boards (Terjesen, 2005). This study is consistent with the research by Dikkers et al. (2010), which shows that women have ambitions and are looking for career growth.

Vinnicombe and Bank (2003) highlighted the main motivations for the growth of women leaving the corporate environment: wage inequalities, career frustration due to "glass ceilings" and the promise of flexibility in entrepreneurship. The results of the research by Leung (2011), carried out with women and female entrepreneurs in Japan, stresses the importance of motherhood, and how they take the mother-family role along the entrepreneurial path.

As for the motivation for the entrepreneurial activity, for women, the difficulty in obtaining employment and a better conciliation between family and career appear as stronger reasons to start a company, while for men, the motivation is the opportunity of new challenges and the prospect of making more money (Marques & Moreira, 2011). These data are also pointed out in the research by Vale et al. (2011), which shows that, in the case of men, the reason "opportunity" was relatively higher: 50% against 34% for women.

Lewis (2015) highlighted how maternity can have a marked influence in the career transition from corporate to self-employment. Her objective was to use the definition of "boundaryless career" as a perspective to explore the understanding related to the life stage of motherhood with the transition to self-employment, as a form of autonomy in the work scenario, with incomes and continuous professional identities. According to McKie, Biese and Jyrkinen (2013), in turn, by opting for self-employment, women are trying to create a career that lays the foundation for gender relations and allows "the cultivation of a more enjoyable scenario through which they can cross to a next phase of their career". Understanding stimuli and motivations on female entrepreneurship is important in understanding the significance of the role of women, not only in the creation, but also in the execution and growth of business as an impacting factor in the economic growth of a society (Acs, Bardasi, Estrin, & Svejnar, 2011).

Women in developed economies are more likely to start businesses due to the opportunity factor, while those living in economically less developed countries are motivated by the need (McGowan et al., 2012; Brush & Cooper, 2012). Minniti and Naudé (2010) show that female entrepreneurship prevalence rates tend to be relatively higher in developing countries than in developed countries because of greater barriers to entry into the formal labor market.

Finally, Ferreira and Nogueira (2013) assert that there are no specific and universal reasons justifying the quest to start their own business. However, reasons for this search can also be an alternative positioning in the face of external changes caused by political, social and economic issues. Women, as social actors, see their lives affected by internal changes as well, in the search for their feminine identity as a professional (Vieira, 2005). The perception of time and space of these women, from the changes of their working conditions, somehow affects the senses that these professionals attribute to the lived experience (Vasconcelos et. al., 2006).

The study is exploratory, since it is carried out in an area of little accumulated and systematized knowledge, which is the case of the transition from executive women's careers to self-employment, considering the variety of possible stimuli in this process. It also has a descriptive character, since it exposes characteristics of the current phenomenon with complex variables of the social, economic and business environment. The method we use is qualitative, using narrative analysis, under the terms proposed by Riessman and Quinney (2005).

A total of 12 entrepreneurs were interviewed, from the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil, aged between 28 and 47 years. The number of interviews is due to the saturation of data, in which what was narrated began to repeat itself. Data was collected in the first semester of 2016. All the interviewees had formal jobs in private companies in various positions before becoming entrepreneurs. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, with the proper authorization of the interviewees. In the process of managing and analyzing the narratives, we used the NVivo software.

The qualitative approach is presented as an adequate and relevant alternative when seeking a greater plurality of the interviewees' spheres of life (Flick, 2009). According to Godoy (1995), in this approach, the direct and prolonged contact of the researcher with the environment and the situation under study is valued. Considering that the phenomenon under study is still little explored, the qualitative approach is "capable to capture the richness of its meaning" (Lindo et al., 2007, p. 106). Both the narrative and the stories report sequences (chronologies) of events, but with the narrative there is more attention to the order and import of events, adding coherence to the narrative. That is, the narration makes the events come to exist in a discursive way (Boje, 2001). Aiming at listening from the perspective of the interviewee, here the qualitative research seeks to investigate the particularities of the interviewees, the how and the why of the facts (Cassell & Symon, 2004).

We also used what is suggested by Schütze (2010) as important parts of the process: 1. let them talk, when the interviewee sets out their initial perceptions about the proposed theme, 2. tie the lost threads, when the researcher seeks to clarify some doubts; and 3. to suggest the reasons why, characterized when the researcher makes brief descriptions of situations that may have gone unnoticed, repeated in the interviewee's narrative.

We used a semi-structured questionnaire, although during interviews the interviewees themselves anticipated the prepared questions, following a spontaneous sequence of narrative. Here, we need a contextualization: the environment in which the interviews took place may have influenced a narrative that is mostly directed to their professions and their business. The personification of the businesswoman was perceptible, sitting at a large table, talking about her choices. This does not mean that there was any inducement caused by the environment, but rather the ratification of a role that was assumed at the time. Emphasis was placed on motivations for career migration, whether by a personal choice in their career planning, or whether the movement was imposed on them by external issues, such as the difficulty of ascending in the formal labor market or the need to reconcile more flexible work due to the double journey, reinforced by maternity. The characteristics of the women interviewed are shown in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1

Interviewee	Age	Educational Background	Number of Children	Marital Status	Sector of the Company	Time in the New Occupation
A	36	Postgraduate	2	Married	Service	2 years
B	39	Postgraduate	3	Married	Service	6 years
C	35	Postgraduate	2	Married	Service	5 months
D	47	Higher Education	3	Married	Industry	8 years
E	38	Postgraduate	1	Divorced	Service	5 years
F	30	Higher Education	1	Married	Trade	2 years
G	45	Postgraduate	3	Divorced	Service	7 years
H	38	Higher Education	None	Married	Service	3 years
I	43	Higher Education	2	Married	Trade	1 year
J	28	Higher Education	None	Married	Trade	7 months
L	37	Postgraduate	1	Married	Service	2 years
M	34	Postgraduate	None	Married	Service	3 years

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Table 3.1(Cont.)

The objective of this study was to investigate, within a broad field of study about contemporary issues about gender in organizations, the reasons which lead female professionals in prominent positions to leave formal corporate positions to migrate to self-employment, in the Brazilian context. It could be noticed that the stimulus to open their own business appeared more intensely from the necessity to find an activity that gave them greater freedom of schedules and, at the same time, satisfaction and recognition. These women sought to reconcile the need for more flexible work and a desire to leverage their careers by opening their own business. Although literature is richer to point exogenous stimuli, the research results showed the relevance of endogenous stimuli.

It was observed that the intention to have more time to devote to family activities was considered relevant. All interviewees had professional ambitions; they sought self-fulfillment through work, but did not exclude growth in a formal job. The arrival of the children, at first, did not consolidate as a decisive factor, nor the family pressures and the responsibilities of the home. The narrative on flexible work was based on the quest for life quality rather than on anguish or guilty feeling for not being together with the children.

Competitive labor market scenario, barrier to professional growth or family pressures: none of these items presented in the theoretical framework appeared in the narrative of the entrepreneurial mothers interviewed. The context of greatest occurrence was the construction of a better work-home balance. No market, family, or emotional pressures were imposed on these women. These entrepreneurial mothers went into self-employment in search of a better life quality, and also as a form of professional self-fulfillment.

Entering motherhood, at first, was not the main motivator for the search of entrepreneurship. Sequences of events intertwined the lives of these women, each having their own life history, which led them to similar professional paths in their careers. The stimuli were several, but these women knew what they wanted. Self-employment was a mature option over time, of which they are proud and foster new business growth. As a result, the following stimuli were highlighted: self-fulfillment and search for flexibility; professional achievement; personal challenges; high level of career ambition; and search for a feminine identity.

For future research, we suggest interviews in more neutral environments, other than at work or in the family context. It is possible that these women took a more professional role, enthusiastic about the work scenario in which they were. This posture could also have been involved by a narrative more inclined to family values if the interviews had been conducted in their homes, tending moreover to the mother role.

Another limitation is the fact that the interviewees appeared to be in a good financial condition, besides a good schooling. Although we did not ask about the family income, nor was it an excluding aspect, these women had a structure that gave them greater stability to conduct their business, such as home assistants, nannies and children in full-time studies. In future research, the representation of female entrepreneurs from the less favored classes should be sought, which may lead to diverse or complementary results. We also suggest investigating the perspectives of companies that lose these women with developed skills and with potential for development. The organizational point of view would help to better understand how the management and retention of talent policies have been worked out.

We subtly observed, in the interviewees' narratives that, although they were satisfied with their own business, demonstrations of the difficulty in making their business profitable and that they are working as much as in the period that they had a formal job. Another suggestion of future research would be a more subjective analysis of the female identity and the organizational environment, since we perceived in many of the interviewees a narrative oriented in the search of their values, which were not taken care of in their old companies. A new research proposal would be to understand to what extent organizations are masculinizing these professionals and whether the transition could be a way of reuniting lost identity, but preserving the independence and power required in contemporary society.