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Sex-role, attributional style, and career choices: A cross-cultural analysis

In the contemporary society choice of career is sex-stereotyped. There are more females in educational and nursing careers, and there are more males in engineering and science careers. Females and males perceive their roles in the society in a sex-stereotyped way and they try to fit into culturally appropriate sex-roles. People make causal attributions for different situations in life and think and behave according to the causal attributions they make. The research question of this dissertation asks if sex-role and attributional style affect career choices, and if the answer is different across cultures. Two studies were concerned with the relationship between sex-role, attributional style, and career choices at college and high school levels in two different cultures (the United States and Romania). Comparisons were made also between females in single-sex high school and coeducational high schools. A third study determined the changes in career choices following attributional retraining. Results from the studies show that career choices are sex-stereotyped and sex-roles influence choice of career in both cultures. The sex-stereotypical choice of careers is more evident in Romania. Females in single-sex education schools report more adaptive sex-roles and attributional styles, and they choose more diverse career fields than females in coeducational schools. Attributional retraining is related to changes in career choices.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/280755
Date January 2005
CreatorsSzabo, Zsuzsanna Rozalia
ContributorsStreitmatter, Janice L.
PublisherThe University of Arizona.
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext, Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic)
RightsCopyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

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