From our earliest history, gifted women from Sappho and Harriet Tubman to Eleanor Roosevelt and Nadine Gordimer have enhanced our lives through their gifts and accomplishments. Since many of these gifted women have succeeded in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles, it is often assumed that all gifted women will be able to achieve without outside help. However, many gifted women do not realize their potential and end up squandering their gifts in menial tasks, underpaid jobs, and unfulfilled lives. Thus, career development for gifted women is an essential task.For women who possess a variety of talents, one of the best ways to be fulfilled is through the balancing of multiple roles, such as family and work. Consequently, one aspect of career development, which is of great importance to gifted women in particular, is the decision about whether to engage in multiple roles and how to do so successfully. Since juggling multiple roles requires prior planning and serious commitment, one of the best ways to assist gifted young women in these tasks is to gain information about how the decision was made and determine their level of commitment to it. As with many career decisions, knowledge about, and encouragement for, particular choices may depend upon mentors and role models.Mentors and role models can be invaluable but their impact in helping with preparation for a lifestyle involving multiple roles is unknown. To determine who their mentors and role models are and how they affect attitudes toward multiple roles, 101 gifted high school women completed a demographics question and the Attitudes Toward Multiple Role Planning scale (ATMRP). Data were analyzed via frequency counts, chisquare, and MANOVA procedures.Contrary to expectations, study participants did not have significantly more role models than they did mentors nor was any one group mentioned most often as mentors and role models. As anticipated, most gifted young women did plan to combine family and paid employment in their lives. However, no significant group differences on the A'TMRP were found between those with mentors and role models and those without. Conclusions and implications are discussed. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

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Gender differences in labor markets and within households have been investigated by researchers for a long time. This dissertation adds new findings to the body of gender-related empirical studies on labor markets and demographic decisions. The first essay deals with the firm size selection behavior of workers and the firms' employment patterns by size in the United States. Using the Current Population Survey, I find that the changes in firm size distribution show different trends by gender between 1987 and 2001. While the percentage of female workers in large firms has increased gradually, that of male workers has hardly changed over time. These trends are not explained by changes in the distribution of demographic and job characteristics alone. I also find that the gender gaps in size-wage premia of workers in large firms decline over the period studied. Using these results, I show that gender wage convergence is partly accounted for by the changes in size distribution and size premia. The second essay examines how internet use affects job search and match outcomes of young workers in South Korea. Using the Youth Panel surveyed in 2001, I find that workers successfully employed through internet search have a significant wage premium over those employed through traditional methods, except for referrals or social networks. The positive wage effect is pronounced among women and previously unemployed workers. I also find that new employees who have ever searched online for jobs are more likely to search for other jobs. The third essay focuses on an idiosyncratic social norm and its effects on demographic outcomes. South Koreans have traditionally considered that the year of the Horse bears inauspicious implications for the birth of daughters. Using monthly longitudinal data at the region level between 1970 and 2003, I find that in the year of the Horse, the sex ratio at birth significantly increases while fertility decreases. The last essay examines how family cultural values, proxied by lunar calendar use for birthday, affect young individuals' marriage and fertility decisions in South Korea. Employing the Youth Panel, I find that young people with lunar birthdays, regardless of gender, are more likely to be married. More interestingly, young married men with lunar birthdays are more likely to have children, while young married women are not influenced by the tradition. These results are consistent with the hypotheses that young men from more traditional families enter into early marriages and that they are more likely to have offspring at earlier ages. / text