Women's empowerment is an important goal of the educational processes around the world. Women in developing countries need support and motivation for attaining higher education and empowerment. This qualitative-exploratory study sought to explore the perceptions of Pakistani female university academics living inside predominantly patriarchal…

Using social cognitive career theory and the cognitive information processing model as frameworks, in this constructivist case study we examined the career-related experiences and decisions of 10 women engineering undergraduate seniors who accepted full-time positions. From the data analysis 3 major themes emerged: critical undergraduate…

We examine whether women's rising labor force participation led to increased intergenerational transmission of occupation from fathers to daughters. We develop a model where fathers invest in human capital that is specific to their own occupations. Our model generates an empirical test where we compare the trends in the probabilities that women…

Professional women with children are inundated with conflicting messages about how to manage their careers and personal lives and whether they should "opt in" or "opt out" of the workforce. Using in-depth interviews with 23 professional women, this study focused on the career choices that women make after having children. The authors found that…

Purpose: Earlier work on career choice has identified that career choice involves gendered processes which lead to differentiated career outcomes for women and men. However, this literature remained anaemic in offering career counselling strategies for addressing the negative impacts of these processes. The paper aims to explore the creativity…

Examines pattern of changes in human service occupations, particularly those in which women predominate. Contends occupational trends of middle- and upper-class women may have far-reaching consequences for organized social service professions. Concludes that giving up the idea that women have primary responsibility for care and nurturance in…

This paper reports the results of a small-scale narrative study of men and women who grew up in mid-twentieth-century rural Wales, and their reminiscences regarding women and education. Although the dominant image of Wales during that era is that of a male-dominated society, all of our participants remembered influential independent women and…

With the rapid changes occurring in the role of work in women's lives, this research project was designed to examine the career planning, career decision making, and work history of women in both female-dominated and gender-neutral careers (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.-a). A qualitative analysis of structured interviews identified 6 emerging…

Relationships among women's role factors, self-estimates of competence, and career commitment were investigated. Female business students and alumnae completed the Attitudes toward Women Scale, the Performance-Self-Esteem Scale (PSES), and questions regarding home and career choices. As predicted, PSES scores were related to extent of career…

A new cultural imperative, marriage and a career,'' is probably emerging. This conclusion is based on study of a random sample of 180 women in junior high, high school, and college. (Author)

Presents Helen Astin's article on women's career choices and work behavior, and includes several responses to her essay. Discusses Astin's need-based work model, involving motivation, expectations, sex-role socialization, and structure of opportunity. Critiques of Astin's work center mainly on the structure of opportunity segment of the model. (BH)

This paper tests a central implication of the theory of equalizing differences, that workers sort into jobs with different attributes based on their preferences. We present evidence from four new time-use data sets for the United States and France suggesting that workers who are more gregarious, as revealed by their behavior when they are not…

This study attempted to discriminate between college educated working mothers who were employed in traditional female occupations (traditionals) and those who had careers in male dominated occupations (pioneers). Pioneers were found to be more career committed than Traditionals and to have more successfully integrated the roles of homemaker and…

Unlike previous research on women's occupational mobility, considers (1) housework to be a possible occupational outcome, and (2) the occupations of both parents as influences on daughters' occupations. Finds that women whose mothers worked are more likely to join the labor force and that their occupations are likely to resemble their mothers'.…

Interviews with 10 women employed in trades revealed four significant factors in the choice of nontraditional occupations: perceived innate ability, strong sense of self, desire for independence, and role models, especially family. Formal career education/counseling was not a factor. Contrary to previous studies, only 3 of the 10 were firstborn or…