DISCRIMINATORY PRESSURES INFLUENCING CAREER CHOICE
Both when a woman selects a nontraditional career goal and when she attempts to pursue it, powerful discriminatory forces can come into play. First we will consider the factors inhibiting the choice of nontraditional career goals, then the barriers impeding the realization of these goals.
Which career to choose or what to do when one “grows up” historically has been a critical question for males within our culture. But the cultural assumption about females is that they will not, if they can possibly help it, work out-1 side the home but rather will care for house and children. If they are to venture out into the work world, there are only certain occupations suitable to their sex. These expectations are operative no matter how educated a woman or how extraordinary her talents.
It has become increasingly evident that not all women share the assumption that a woman’s “place” is in the home. Although most women do marry and have children, many also work.) In fact, the proportion of working women has risen from 20% in 1900 to 45% in 1974 (Troll). By 1980, the number of women in the work force is projected to be greater than the number of men.
A great deal of data has been accumulated, however, demonstrating that women still are largely confined to traditional women’s occupations. In the sixties, for instance, there was a disproportionately small growth in numbers of women in professional and technical fields, in skilled trades, and in managerial capacities, but a disproportionately large increase in the number of women clerical workers (Hedges).
Thus, while the numbers of women in the labor force have increased, the scope and range of their activities has not. Even the small numbers who do enter professions seems to wind up in the specialties considered lowest in status (Gross). In law, women are found far more frequently in practices involving juvenile, divorce, or welfare cases than in practices involving tax law and corporate litigation. Similar patterns have been found in medicine in which women typically are pediatricians, dermatologists, or psychiatrists, rather than surgeons, internists, or neurologists. In academia this tendency also has been found to predominate with women comprising a far larger proportion of the state teachers college faculties than of the faculties of wealthier and more revered schools.
Although these statistics may well reflect the hesitancy of women to break new ground, they also suggest the existence of recriminatory forces within our educational and work institutions that discourage women from entering non-traditional fields. Two such forces are the vocational counseling process and the paucity of visible role models.
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