THE NARRATIVE ALIBI: How U.S. Media Transforms Structural Barriers Into Stories of Personal Choice in Women’s Exits From Finance.

Abstract

Despite sustained attention to gender inequality in elite professions, there remains a persistent gap between women’s entry into finance and their representation at senior levels. Women enter the industry in substantial numbers, yet their presence narrows at mid-career and declines further in leadership positions. Public discussion frequently explains these departures through the language of personal choice, emphasizing decisions to reprioritize family life, seek balance, or pursue more meaningful work. Research across fields has identified workplace expectations of constant availability, long hours, and penalties associated with caregiving responsibilities as central features shaping career progression in these professions. While existing scholarship has examined the institutional drivers of gender inequality in elite labor markets, there is comparatively little research on the extent to which media narratives continue to emphasize individualized choice when describing women’s departures from finance. To address this gap, this thesis examines the prevalence of individualized choice framing in U.S. media coverage of women’s mid-career exits from finance between 2000 and 2025. Accordingly, this research asks: to what extent do media narratives rely on individualized choice framing when describing women’s mid-career departures from finance, despite a substantial body of research documenting the role of workplace structure in shaping career outcomes? To answer this question, I apply a qualitative media content analysis of 100 articles published in major U.S. news outlets between 2000 and 2025, examining: (1) how women’s exits are explained, (2) where responsibility for inequality is located, and (3) how narratives resolve tensions between workplace structure and individual agency. Using this framework, the study examines whether institutional pressures remain central to these explanations or are absorbed into more individualized accounts of career decisions. The analysis finds that long hours, maternal bias, and limited flexibility appear consistently across coverage, but are frequently incorporated into narratives emphasizing personal decision-making. Although references to workplace inequality become more explicit over time, stories often conclude by framing exit as a meaningful personal decision rather than as the outcome of organizational design. These patterns suggest that public interpretations of gender inequality in elite labor markets are shaped not only by workplace arrangements themselves, but also by the narrative structures through which those arrangements are explained. By treating career decisions as both individual experiences and socially structured outcomes, this thesis contributes to an emerging body of research examining how narrative form influences the way inequality is understood and addressed.