Over the last several decades, research has quite consistently demonstrated significant gender differences in the development and expression of young people’s occupational interests (Swanson & Gore, 2000). For example, researchers have shown that children from an early age have strong sex-typed occupational preferences, with boys demonstrating more rigid sex typing than girls (Helwig, 1998 and Helwig, 2002; Trice, Hughes, Odom, Woods, & McClellan, 1995). Middle school and high school aged adolescents’ interests and efficacy to pursue specific occupations have been shown to correspond to demonstrated differences in men’s and women’s employment patterns across Holland Themes (i.e., more men work in realistic, investigative, and enterprising occupations, and more women work in artistic, social, and conventional occupations) (Gottfredson & Lapan, 1997; Lapan, Adams, Turner, & Hinkelman, 2000; Lapan, Hinkelman, Adams, & Turner, 1999; Turner & Lapan, 2002). Middle school, junior-high, and high school aged adolescents’ vocational aspirations, expectations, and preferences have been shown to be associated with their sex-type ratings of occupations, with boys showing significantly higher preferences than girls for more prestigious and higher paying careers (Armstrong & Crombie, 2000; Brown, 1997; Davey & Stoppard, 1993; Lapan & Jingeleski, 1992). College age young people have been shown to express greater interests in, efficacy for, and commitment to occupations that are dominated by members of their own gender (Betz & Schifano, 2000; Chung, 2002; Einarsdottir & Rounds, 2000).
Gender differences are a critical factor to the extent that they lead young people to pursue certain career paths at the expense of others. One theory that describes how such gender differences develop is circumscription and compromise theory (CCT; Gottfredson, 1981 and Gottfredson, 2002; Gottfredson & Lapan, 1997). According to CCT, young people’s occupational aspirations (and interests) are shaped by their socialization experiences. By the age of nine, children begin to circumscribe their vocational interests according to their understanding of the gender-appropriateness of various occupations. This circumscription of aspirations means that by early adolescence, when interests have crystallized, young people have decreased their “zone of acceptable alternatives,” which demarcates those occupations that the individual considers preferable from those that are ruled out as incompatible with how one comes to understand oneself. This rejection of whole segments of the occupational world leads to a narrowing of the occupational options that young people consider and explore, and for which they prepare.
Some authors have addressed how to change adolescents’ career interests. For example, both Prediger and Noeth (1979), and O’Brien, Dukstein, Jackson, Tomlinson, and Kamatuka (1999) demonstrated that using the results of adolescents’ career interest inventories to engage them in career exploration yielded an increase in the number of careers young people considered, and improved the congruence between their career interests and potential career choices. However, although there is compelling evidence in the vocational literature that gender-typing of occupations limits adolescents’ occupational options, little research has been done to explore how to intervene to address the issue of occupational gender-typing among boys and girls.
Some theorists (Gottfredson & Lapan, 1997) have hypothesized that interventions which increase young people’s career-related self-efficacy may reverse, at least in part, their circumscription of occupations by broadening their zone of acceptable alternatives. Given the need for research in this area, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of a computerized career intervention for middle school adolescents designed to increase their career awareness, their efficacy to engage in career planning and exploration, their efficacy to engage in educational planning for specific occupations, and their vocational interests in non-traditional careers. The intervention, Mapping Vocational Challenges (MVC; Lapan & Turner, 1997, 2000), includes educational and occupational information about a variety of career pathways, a self-assessment activity that focuses on the influence of gender-role stereotyping on adolescents’ interests, efficacy, perceived parent support, and valuing of various careers, and an interpretive report that can be used by career and guidance counselors to facilitate adolescents’ understanding and use of their own assessment results.
We hypothesized that use of the MVC would increase young adolescents’ career planning and exploration self-efficacy, educational and vocational development self-efficacy, and career interests in non-traditional occupations (i.e., for boys A, S, and C and for girls R, I, and E) across Holland’s occupational themes. Specifically, we hypothesized that there would be significant differences at pre-test in the career interests and efficacy of adolescents, as a function of gender (Hypothesis 1); that there would be significant increases at post-test in career planning and exploration efficacy, and educational and vocational development efficacy for both boys and girls in the experimental group but not in the control group (Hypothesis 2); and, that there would be significant increases at post-test in non-traditional career interests for both boys and girls in the experimental group but not in the control group (Hypothesis 3).
