The probability of reaching a permanent academic position is strongly gendered in most if not all higher education systems. Though a widely studied phenomenon, few studies problematise the way national contexts both academic and non-academic that shape employment structures and national gender regimes are interpreted by individual academics, and frame their career strategies and the ways of subjectively coping with the norms of academic careers. Aiming to ll this research gap, this chapter compares the subjective representations of early career academics in terms of career expectation and articulation between professional and private sphere in two contrasted national contexts; Finland and Switzerland. Focusing especially on international mobility, the paper aims to reveal how national polities matter to understand young academics' strategies and how these strategies are shaped or not by gender relationships in the era of the so called internationalisation' of academic labour markets and the norm of the academic sta mobility a. a We dedicate this chapter to the memory of our colleague and friend prof. Kelly Ward, whose work signicantly contributed to a better understanding of gendered academic careers and whose management of the work-family and more generally work-life balance has been and shall long remain a source of inspiration. Kelly participated to the panel in which this paper was presented in the CHER 2017 Jyväskylä conference with her usual enthusiasm and sense of sharing. She will be deeply missed.