My book on men opting out: Men Do It Too: Opting Out and In has now been published! The hardback and e-versions are now available and a paperback version will be published in a few months.

See also my  book Opting Out and In: On Women’s Careers and New Lifestyles (Routledge, 2017)

and my chapter Men Opting Out: Disenchantment with Corporate Cultures and Career Ideals which has been published in the book: Men, Masculinities and the Modern Career. It’s open access and available to all.

For a list of my publications, click here.

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My name is Ingrid Biese and a few years ago, I opted out of my business career to start working on a PhD on women who opt out of their careers. Opting out is a topic that has been debated both in the media and in the academic world. While the debate has been mostly about women who opt out of successful careers to become stay-at-home moms, I believe that the phenomenon is much greater than that. It is a contemporary phenomenon, and something we are going to see much more of. Opting out it is about leaving traditional or mainstream ways of working to create new solutions and lifestyles where one can live and work on one’s own terms, redefining what it means to be successful.

I finished my PhD in 2014 and now I have gone on to research men opting out. I am looking at new meanings of work and what that means for individuals and organizations going into the future. I am living and working on my own terms with one foot in the academic world and the other in the business world, and I do research, I write, I give talks, and I spar with individuals and organizations.

I started this blog when I finished my PhD, mainly because my research generated so much media attention and people really seemed to want to know more about opting out. Originally I planned for it to be a platform for thoughts, ideas, and discussions on opting out and new meanings of work, however since then it has become more than that. I write about my research and related topics, and about societal phenomena that affect our choices and the very core of our beings. But I also write about my own opting out journey, a journey, which I am still on, and like everything else I do, I do it on my own terms.

We live in exciting times because working life as we know it is changing, and with my posts I hope to provide you with inspiration, meaning, and food for thought. So I hope you enjoy my blog. If you want to contact me or share your own opting out story with me, I would love to hear from you. You can email me at theoptingoutblog@gmail.com*

Follow me on Facebook: The Art Place Finland

on Twitter: @IBIESE

or on Instagram: @ingrids_silk_painting

* All information and emails are confidential and will be treated as such.