Career Planning among Women
A dearth of career planning among women has been alternately attributed to nature and nurture. On the one hand, psychological traits assumed to be characteristic of females--for example, passivity and a primary concern with interpersonal connection--have allegedly stood in the way of the assertive, instrumental, apersonal behavior needed for the setting of a career strategy. On the other hand, sex role socialization has been called to task as responsible for women's lack of career preparation. Unambiguous examples of that socialization were seen above in the gender-directed advice given by 1960s high school guidance counselors. Even now, with an ever-increasing majority of women, married or single, working, females continue to be seen as having a choice about work that men do not have. It is not difficult to Edit my essay with the help of qualified paper editors! Make your essay the best! If this is the case, an ambivalence could interfere with both the individual woman's career planning and corporate acceptance of women as a permanent part of the professional picture.
Women have been more work-oriented than traditional ideology has allowed. Even prior to the current women's movement, some were determined to enter the male-dominated business world. In the 1960s few mechanisms were in place to prepare women for business careers. Graduating from high school in the late sixties, Marie saw opportunity in business, particularly for women, and she pursued relevant academic preparation. With a liberal arts background and a somewhat more specialized, but not business, graduate degree.
The psychological development of these women does not conform to the social influences of their time. Ideology rarely subsumes everyone, and individual variation in relief can anticipate more collective change. Prior to large-scale change, however, the structures and practices that would teach women about career were absent. That they could even have business aspirations at that time belies female passivity regardless of their ability to take the next step of planning. Women's thinking about business careers was truncated not by their unsui natures but rather by the absence of societal guideposts for females to take such a path. If the question is to work or not to work, it is clear now that women can anticipate spending much of their adult lives employed. Perhaps they have less of a choice about work than they do about career. It makes sense, however, that if women must plan to be self-supporting, a career, as opposed to a job, would be the preferred route. Although the women interviewed may have been tentative in their initial employment explorations, they developed the ambition that transforms a job into a career relatively quickly.