The underrepresentation of women in high status, traditionally male professions can be attributed to sex-role socialization and discrimination. To examine the relationship between personal characteristics and stress in a sex-role incongruent situation, female (N=64) and male (N=21) engineering, management, and pre-medical students completed…

Women who, as adolescents, feared success in male-dominated fields, may demonstrate non-traditional career preferences later in life and return to school to pursue their new career aspirations. In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 women over age 30 who were enrolled in graduate or professional schools. Data showed that mature women students…

Women are underrepresented in professional and technical careers. Research to examine this imbalance has focused on either characteristics of individual women or the interpersonal and structural barriers faced in pursuing these careers. An integration of both person and setting perspectives may provide further understanding of traditionally…

Underrepresentation of women in higher status, traditionally male occupations has been attributed to sex-role socialization and to discrimination. Female students entering traditionally male professions may suffer many of the same pressures that have prevented other women from entering these fields. Undergraduate women (N=64) and men (N=21) in…

Undergraduate females were classified either as traditional or nontraditional in their views of appropriate occupations for women, based upon scores on Spence and Helmreich's Attitudes Toward Women Scale. Each group was then administered an occupationally stereotyped or a non-stereotyped version of Horner's Item Test (describing Anne who is a…

Studied the relation of self-efficacy and assertiveness to women's willingness to engage in traditional or nontraditional career activities. Strong self-efficacy expectations and assertiveness were related to willingness to engage in career-related activities of nontraditional but not traditional occupations where, regardless of self-efficacy and…

Describes the mentoring component of a federally funded project, Women's Academic and Career Choices. The objective of the project was to open and broaden young college women's thinking about academic and career choices through a two-credit strategy course, intensive mentoring/advising activity, and role-modeling. (Author)

Freshmen women (N=530) completed a 78-item inventory examining differences between women who choose traditional and nontraditional careers. Results indicated that women who make nontraditional career choices have higher achievement orientation, have better study skills, are more encouraged to explore nontraditional interests, and have more…

Male (N=110) and female (N=84) undergraduate students completed a variant of the Semantic Differential questionnaire. Subjects evaluated either male or female liberal arts and engineering majors. Female engineering majors were evaluated as less attractive than their female liberal arts counterparts. (Author)

A study at the University of Colorado compared minority (n=73) and white (n=122) faculty perceptions of employment/workplace issues and minority affairs. Minority faculty were dissatisfied with certain contexts in the institution and felt excluded. Interactions of race and gender were also examined. (Author/MSE)

Issues concerning mentoring for women in higher education are discussed. After identifying benefits of mentoring for the protege, the mentor, and the institution, barriers to traditional mentoring for women are considered. Attention is directed to why men may hesitate to mentor women students and faculty, why female mentors are hard to find on…

Self-esteem of female college students at two large state universities was studied, with attention to the relationship of self-esteem to the choice of traditional or nontraditional careers, or homemaking. A second area of interest was the relationship of career maturity and locus of control to career type. A total of 180 freshmen and senior…

The characteristics and persistence of young women who entered college during the 1970s and expressed an interest in science, math, and engineering (SME) are examined. The study design includes: (1) trend analysis of changes in characteristics of the science-oriented freshman pool from 1971-1979; (2) a longitudinal study of the educational and…

Observations of the career decision-making (CDM) behaviors of college students were analyzed to investigate how variations in the CDM process may be associated with sex and "sex-typed" values. Data were collected from records of students' interaction with the computer-based System of Interactive Guidance and Information (SIGI) to look…

As part of a community college orientation course, a curriculum model was developed to help male and female students explore career goals with an awareness of the influence of sexism and stereotypic attitudes on their occupational choices. This model was compared to a traditional vocational exploration unit. (Author)