Assessing Barriers to Women's Career Adjustment

Abstract

In this article, we overview the literature on women's career barriers and identify potential external, environmental barriers and individual, socialized barriers to women's career adjustment. We describe a variety of assessment strategies and instruments that may be utilized to assess barriers to women's career adjustment. A case example is provided to illustrate the assessment process.

Investigating the relations of ethnicity to female students’ perceptions and intention to major in engineering using social cognitive theory

“…Lent and coworkers [11] assert that goals are less likely to be translated into action if a person perceives the presence of adverse environmental conditions. Our nonsignificant results in relation to perceived barriers and ethnicity contradict other SCCT literature [7,8,32,33] that report that minority students perceive increased barriers to educational plans compared to White students. Upon further examination of survey results and analysis of results initial interviews, we believe that the five survey items querying the likelihood of receiving discouragement or feeling pressured to change majors by family and friends, not fitting in socially, and worrying that too much schooling is required to be an engineer may not adequately address potential barriers perceived by this distinctive student population.…”

Career Choice Anxiety, Coping, and Perceived Control

“…Still, more items that assess control are desirable to increase the scale's reliability. In addition, further study of the degree to which the measure captures the respondents' overall perceived control oftheir career choices, using interview procedures such as those described by McWhirter et al (1998), is needed. Moreover, information is needed about whether strengthening perceived control during the decision-making process affects type or amount of coping.…”

“…One such group is young women in lowlevel jobs that are not part of a career ladder. Their circumstances may prevent many of them from believing that the issues related to their career choice can be resolved (McWhirter, Torres, & Rasheed, 1998). They are not receiving either formal or on-the-job training to equip them with skills to advance, and few of their coworkers have advanced.…”

Coping with Work and Family Role Conflict: Career Counselling Considerations for Women

“…Therefore, a sole focus on the client's personal dynamics is not sufficient in tackling the role conflict issue. Career counselling should draw attention to the social and societal context in which the hindering variables are rooted, and pose negative impact on working women's experience of role conflict (McWhirter, Torres, & Rasheed, 1998). The counsellor needs to incorporate these extra-personal hindering factors into the helping process.…”