Practice and research in career counseling and Development—2005

Career Development Quarterly, Dec, 2006 by Thomas F. Harrington, Theresa A. Harrigan

O'Neil and Bilimoria also looked at how members of their sample would define meaning and success. Personal fulfillment and happiness were expressed by more than half the women in the sample, predominantly from the two earlier age groups. An overview of the findings led to the conclusion that different manifestations could be identified among the three phases. The subsequent age-linked model of women's career development consisted of the idealistic achievement period (Phase 1), pragmatic endurance stage (Phase 2), and pragmatic endurance period (Phase 3). Based on the information from the sample, this model may be applicable only to professional women.

Cook, Hepner, and O'Brien addressed the multicultural and gender influences in women's career development from an ecological perspective. They extracted four major subsystems from the ecological model of Bronfenbrenner (1977). Career-relevant beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are strongly influenced by micro- and macrosystems. Self-perception and awareness of career possibilities occurs through childhood interactions (microsystem) and social and cultural beliefs of appropriateness (macrosystem). The macrosystem provides messages that perpetuate career stereotypes.

Cook et al. described life phases (early childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood) from the ecological system perspective, stressing influences of immediate environments, blatant and subtle forms of sexism and racism, biases, and role commitments. The authors emphasized issues of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation and considered obstacles and coping strategies occurring at micro and macro levels. An implication for counselors is a heightened awareness in their practice of the ecological dynamics that influence career behavior.

Creamer and Laughlin chose the theoretical framework of self-authorship to explain how women interpret career information from various sources. Although cognitive in nature, self-authorship is distinct from agency (actions) and self-efficacy (self-confidence beliefs). It is concerned with processes of judgment. Citing the work of Baxter Magolda (1999), Creamer and Laughlin described self-authorship as "an ability to construct and evaluate knowledge claims in context, an ability to construct an internal identity separate from but sensitive to external factors, and an ability to genuinely consider others' perspectives without being consumed by them" (p. 16). Interviews with 40 college women focused on different dimensions of self-authorship (interpersonal, epistemological, and intrapersonal) and included an opportunity for participants to describe a difficult decision-making situation. For the interpersonal dimension, women identified influential people. Nearly all the students identified one or both parents as influential in career choice, whereas advisers and counselors were named by just 3 participants. The epistemological dimension involved criteria used to make decisions. Two externally focused categories evolved from the interviews: a need for approval and trust and respect for authority. Only a small number of women expressed a sense of interdependence. The intrapersonal dimension centered on response to conflicting advice. A significant number of participants stated that they would not listen to conflicting advice or would just listen to be polite. The authors interpreted this response as an illustration that these women could not manage different viewpoints and were in the early stages of self-authorship. When a situation involving judgment was described, the women articulated positive and negative experiences. Negative experiences were found to be detrimental to confidence levels and to the development of decision-making skills.