Research in sex-roles has found masculinity and androgyny to be correlated with self-esteem while femininity has a low or negative correlation with self-esteem. Much of the research in this area is based in studies of androgyny. Androgyny is the ability to respond in a feminine or masculine manner, depending on the situation rather than being limited to only feminine or masculine behavior because of sex-role stereotypes. In the research on self-esteem some studies have reported androgynous individuals measure high in self-esteem. Other studies have found that masculine characteristics contribute more to the self-esteem than androgynous characteristics. These results, taken together, suggest people with androgynous and masculine characteristics have high self-esteem while those with feminine characteristics have lowered or negative self-esteem.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 10, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Thesis advisor: Dr. Lee Wilkins. Includes bibliographical references.

This qualitative study investigated the role mentoring plays in the professional development of women in student affairs. The goal of this research was not to prove a theory about women's mentoring relationships, but rather to richly describe these relationships in order to understand the impact they have had, and will continue to have on womens' professional lives. The results of this study is significant because it will provide a foundation for understanding the process of women's mentoring relationships in student affairs. The researcher conducted five indepth, open-ended interviews with women in various positions in student affairs in order to gather rich, descriptive data. The researcher selected women with whom she already has at least an acquaintance relationship. These women were from the Mid-West region. Each woman was at a different point in her professional development- graduate student, new professional, midlevel, and senior administrator. Women from both private and public institutions were interviewed. Four themes emerged from the interviews that each of these women discussed. These themes were, there are common characteristics of mentoring relationships; the impact mentoring has on the early development of the professional; the importance of having a female mentor; and the scarcity of female mentors at the top of the ladder. / Department of Secondary, Higher, and Foundations of Education

Thesis (D. Ed. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. "November 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-200, 37-40).

Thesis (D. Ed. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes abstract and vita. "November 2005" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-200, 37-40).

In a moment a woman can decide to remain on a set career path, however through Impressions management, a process by which individuals attempt to control the impressions others form of themselves, decisions are made to continue or opt out. The focus of this study was to explore unspoken or (in)visible norms that form part of these impressions. The study explored what the norms are that move a woman along her career journey and norms that move her away. The findings in this research report considered the existing body of literature on women, norms, impression management and career progression. This research project comprised of ten in-depth interviews with women in an organisation. The women were interviewed face-to-face, in an unstructured format. Secondary sources such as annual reports and company website were reviewed. The research found that when career building norms were visible to both the woman and others, the woman experienced positive career progression. When the woman was unaware of career building norms, but these were visible to others, the woman experienced positive career development. When the woman was aware of career limiting norms, while this remained oblivious to others and remained unspoken, career dis-alignment was experienced by the woman. Lastly when both the woman and others did not question or acknowledge existing career limiting norms, her career experienced status quo. There was lack of diversity in the sample and the company and country context influenced the results. This study focused on contributing to (in)visibility by assessing the impact of impressions management of women’s career progression. This would contribute to considerations when developing women’s career progression plans. A total of four suggestions were made for future research. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lmgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology) / During the past decades married women increasingly joined the labour market due to financial reasons as well as a need for self-actualisation, and this has had significant consequences for these womens' marriages and family lives. In addition to women joining the labour market for financial reasons, more and more women are obtaining higher academic qualifications enabling them to pursue professional careers and apply to join traditional male professional occupations, such as the medical and dental professions, the law professions, the engineering and architectural professions, as well as various other professions. Professions have been described by certain sociologists as greedy occupations. Professions tend to absorb workers to such an extent that work remain central in their thoughts even when at home, and sometimes compel them to work long hours, weekends and holidays. The division between home life and .work life becomes blurred and, to a certain extent, professional work becomes a style of life. Since the practising of a professional career requires rigorous work hours, dedication, as well as commitment, and the implications of practising such a career for the married woman with children, especially small children, are substantial. Firstly, to what extent will she be able to comply with the requirements of a professional career and adequately care for her family? Secondly, how will a professional career affect the quality of her marriage and family life? Will she be able to commit herself to both a family as well as a career? This study deals with research into the commitment of 642 married working women in the PWV-area to their work. Respondents were selected by means of a random sample obtained from the telephone directories of the PWV-area. Data was collected by means of conducting a telephonic and postal survey with the help of the opinion survey centre of the Human Sciences Research Council.

M.Ed. / This study researches the working mother's experience of her world in order to explore and describe it. The aim of the study is to make recommendations to the educational psychologist (who is involved in the development and education of the child) resulting from the experiences of the different mothers. The research report starts with the contextualization of the study in Chapter 1, by creating a social- and theoretical framework. The theoretical framework places the woman in a system of interdependent relations, placing her internal experience and her external participation in society, in context. In Chapter 2 the exploratory, descriptive, contextual and qualitative study that was done, is described. To collect the data, phenomenological interviewing was done. The interviews were taped and then transcribed. The test sample consists of five women with professional careers or who used to have professional careers. The collected data was processed with a combination of Tesch's method, Kerlinger's method and categorisation.

Family businesses are major contributors to economies around the world. It is also recognised that family businesses are critical to entrepreneurship, socio- economic development and industrialisation around the world. Women in family business are major contributors to the success of the family business around the world. Limited research is available on the role of women in family business. The research conducted yielded similar results for South Africa. The impact of family business on entrepreneurship and the economy, with respect to socio- economic development, has placed great interest in family business studies in South Africa. This study focused on the role of women in black family business in South Africa. This research found that women in black family business focus on bringing softer skills to the business which are beneficial for people management. In their capacity as managers in the family business, women tend to take on a supportive role to the spouse; they tend to focus on ensuring a harmonious and peaceful culture in the work place. Women in family business have a dual role of ensuring business success and quality family life. They prefer to work in the shadow of their male counterparts. Challenges faced by women in black family business have been identified as the lack of inclusion in strategic decision- making, lack of decision-making career opportunities and the lack of consideration for succession within the business, a lack of business mentorship and ambiguity of roles in the business and in the family. It has been found that the role of women in black family business may be enhanced going forward. This may be done through educational programmes or workshops for management skills for women, networking opportunities and support groups, counselling on work/family management strategies, and spousal sharing of responsibilities in the work- family management relationship. A suggested area for future research is the impact of culture in family business in South Africa.

Gender disparities are still prevalent universally, and are often expressly and tacitly condoned, even in highly developed societies. In South Africa, women make up 52% of the population yet, only 44% of working South Africans are women (BWASA, 2012). However, recent trends show that a significant enough number of women do make it to all levels of positions in organisations, and that women generally have a great desire to lead. Conversely, very few women think or believe that their organisations provide them with the necessary and adequate support, in order to be able do so. Thus, in spite of the active efforts and commitments made by many South African organisations to influence women’s career advancement, it is still unfortunately not clear if the initiatives and programmes that are implemented are a core strategic imperative, or whether they are merely part of a peripheral agenda. As a result, this study takes a contingency approach to examine whether the career advancement of women is indeed a core strategic initiative, or whether it is peripheral in South African organisations. The good news is that some organisations are excelling in their commitment to empowering female roles and role-models in the workplace, and this study aims to understand why these organisations are doing exceptionally well, and why others are lagging behind. A qualitative method, which is exploratory in nature, was adopted to collect and analyse the data for this study. Fifteen individuals, who constitute a sample, were interviewed; and the scope was limited to the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Human Resource executives or any other executives responsible for diversity in the respective organisation. The main findings in this research were as follows: Firstly, the agenda that is most likely to be framing women’s career advancement in the organisations is one that is underscored by moral or ethical imperatives, and this is done in order to attempt to ensure that all forms of inequalities that existed are eradicated, so as to respond to the social pressure for ethical and moral transparency. Secondly, the organisations do understand the critical issues of women’s career advancement, but they fail to recognize the significant rewards of real women empowerment. Thirdly, some organisations seem to be doing exceptionally well, while others are sadly lagging behind. Finally, most organisations do not have clear measurement and monitoring frameworks to track their progress and impact in women career advancement initiatives. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lmgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted