Performance-based careers are frequently framed as professionally volatile, particularly for women balancing motherhood and financial responsibility. Fixed salaries, predictable hours, and conventional corporate structures continue to carry the perception of stability, while commission-driven or entrepreneurial models are often treated as financially precarious. Noor Shikari believes that the assumption deserves closer examination.
Shikari, whose career has been shaped by performance-based work within the financial services and advisory sector, argues that many of the qualities associated with managing a household or raising children directly align with the demands of autonomous, results-oriented careers. Time management, self-direction, resilience, and accountability are not abstract leadership traits in her view. Many women, she insists, already exercise them daily.
"We're the ones that need all the flexibility," Shikari says. "We're the ones that do really well scheduling and doing stuff on our own and for ourselves."
Conversations around women in the workforce often position flexibility as a secondary benefit rather than a structural necessity. Research continues to show that women disproportionately carry domestic and childcare responsibilities, even in dual-income households. Shikari believes many women, therefore, dismiss performance-based work before fully understanding what the structure actually entails.
"There's this assumption that if you have responsibilities, you can't take on performance-based work. I actually think those responsibilities become the biggest motivator," she says.
It's important to note that Shikari doesn't romanticize the model. She acknowledges that performance-based careers carry uncertainty, particularly during the early stages when income consistency has not yet been established. Within that context, she urges that financial discipline and preparation remain essential.
Still, she believes the broader conversation often overlooks an important distinction: risk is relative to personality, temperament, and work style. A rigid environment with constant oversight may feel secure to one person and deeply limiting to another. "Sometimes it is a risk to take on a performance basis," Shikari says. "I don't pretend that it's not. But for the right person, it feels like low risk, high reward."
Much of the misunderstanding, she argues, comes from how performance-based work is commonly portrayed. Public perception often reduces it to commission-only income without addressing the operational freedom attached to it. Shikari notes that autonomy over scheduling fundamentally changed the way she was able to navigate motherhood and career simultaneously.
"I didn't have someone saying, 'Where were you at the 10 AM meeting?'" she says. "I didn't have to stress about missing a shift. Starting this career allowed me to show up for my kids a lot more."
Shikari also points to the longstanding gender pay gap within salaried professionals as part of the wider conversation around career security. Traditional employment structures often place compensation behind layers of negotiation and institutional bias.
Performance-based models, she argues, operate differently. Compensation is tied directly to output and results rather than office politics or visibility within a hierarchy. She says, "In a performance-based environment, there isn't really room for someone to decide you deserve less for the same work. Your results are your results."
Her perspective also challenges the assumption that productivity must be externally monitored to be legitimate. Corporate environments increasingly rely on surveillance-style metrics and rigid attendance structures to measure performance. Shikari believes many self-directed professionals operate more effectively without those mechanisms."Someone else isn't constantly monitoring your keystrokes to measure your productivity. Even remote work isn't truly flexible; you still have to clock in on time, just from a different location. Ultimately, a lot of this career simply comes down to a willingness to show up," she adds.
Women, Shikari believes, already manage a plethora of competing responsibilities in their daily lives. Because of that, she notes that they possess a natural autonomy that makes micromanagement unnecessary.
Support systems, however, remain central to whether someone succeeds in this type of environment. Shikari rejects the idea that autonomy means isolation. In her view, internal mentorship and collaborative guidance are essential components of sustainable performance-based work, particularly for people entering unfamiliar industries.
Her approach extends beyond professional onboarding. Shikari believes emotional infrastructure matters equally. During recruitment conversations, she often asks candidates who influences their decisions most heavily at home. "Who's the voice in your ear?" she says. "Whether it's a partner, parent, mentor, or best friend, that person has to be on board too."
Despite her own success within the industry, Shikari openly admits disappointment in one area: recruiting more women into the field. Her teams have remained heavily male-dominated, something she finds increasingly difficult to reconcile given how naturally the structure aligns with the realities many women already navigate.
"I imagine myself recruiting 10 to 15 women every year," she says. "It hasn't happened that way, and I think it's interesting because this type of work is arguably designed for people who already know how to direct themselves."
Shikari does not position performance-based careers as universally suitable. Some professionals often thrive within fixed systems and predictable routines. Others may find greater stability in environments where advancement is linear and responsibilities are narrowly defined. Her argument is narrower and more practical: women carrying substantial responsibilities should not automatically assume autonomy-based careers are incompatible with stability.
Many, she posits, already possess the exact qualities those careers demand. Once they leverage these inherent strengths, women can move beyond mere survival and actively shape these professional environments to thrive on their own terms.
