The purpose of this research was to investigate college women's career aspirations and to determine if there are differences between women who aspire to non-traditional and traditional careers. Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interactionism provided the theoretical framework for this analysis. / The subjects were a national probability sample of 3,879 female college freshmen who responded to a 1978 survey by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program. The respondents were asked to select their probable careers from a list of 42 occupations. The career aspirations of the women were ranked into ten categories of traditionality; these rankings were based on the distribution of the women's career choices compared to the choices of 4,010 male college freshmen who responded to the survey. / Eleven hypotheses were tested; all were supported. The data indicated that the more non-traditional a woman's career aspirations: (1) the younger her age, (2) the more educated her mother, (3) the more educated her father, (4) the greater her parents' income, (5) the more non-traditional her mother's occupation, (6) the more liberal her social attitudes, (7) the less frequent her church attendance, (8) the less importance she attaches to raising a family, (9) the less immediate her plans for marriage, (10) the higher her high school grades, and (11) the higher her academic degree intentions. The eleven variables also significantly discriminated the third of the women with the most non-traditional career aspirations from the third of the sample with the most traditional aspirations. The results indicated that variables related to the women's achievement were better predictors of career aspirations than family background variables. / Path analysis using four of the eleven independent variables revealed minimal indirect effects; it also demonstrated that traditionality of mother's occupation could be removed from the model without any appreciable loss in predictive power. / The findings indicated that women are aspiring to more non-traditional careers; however, there is still considerable sex-typing in career aspirations. It was concluded that structural changes in society need to be made in order to enhance opportunities for women. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-11, Section: A, page: 4956. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74694 |
| Contributors | SULLIVAN, JOAN MARGARET., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 201 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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