Culture, Gender, and Social Status on Career Essay

Culture, Gender, and Social Status on Career Choices

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Career patterns of individuals are directly and indirectly influenced by several factors. Culture, gender and social status are but a few of these factors. Culture and beliefs affect the career choices of individuals and there is a huge disparity between the career choices of men and women which arise from the participation of women being below parity as compared to that of men. There is a need to increase the awareness and understanding of individuals on the barriers to the achievement of greater opportunities and this is why it is important to understand the impact of culture, gender and social status on career choices.

Culture

Research has shown that there is a strong relation between culture and career choices. The aspects of culture that have been examined are attitude towards religion and the work values. Research on the relation between attitude towards religion and career choices is quite sparse but there is a strong relation that exists between attitude and religion. Eccles and Wigfield (1995)

asked high school students to state reasons why they wouldn't prefer certain occupations and it was found that the students did not like the profession of law as a result of perpetuation of injustice, immoral deals and corruption. The researchers also found that the parents would not allow their children to take up jobs in the police force or customs department as a result of temptations to be corrupt and take bribes. These are but a few of the examples of how attitude towards religion affects career choices.

Work values are those things which individuals hold dear to them and consider them worthy to attain. Many studies have found that there is a significant relationship between the work values and career choices of individuals Blustein, Walbridge, Friedlander, & Palladino, 1991(; Ogunkola, 2005)

. In general, the career choice of each individual is affected by the work values of that particular career.This can be related to the findings of Eccles and Wigfield (1995)

where there are particular career choices such as law and the police force that are associated with negative values and thus many individuals shy away from these careers.

Gender

Men and women in this world hold different kinds of jobs. There is abundant evidence to support this. There is a difference in the kind of jobs that a woman can handle better with those which a man can handle better. There is sex segregation in the workplace that is somewhat a voluntary process by which men and women make their different career choices. The process through which individuals make their career choices in live is affected greatly by gender. Gender differences in the selection of activities that constrain their occupational or career choices are common.

This can be seen also in colleges where there is a difference in the courses taken by men vs. those taken by women which directly affects their career expectations. Certain careers in fields such as engineering are popular for men with only a meager number of women while the less tasking ones are taken up by more women Ruth & Purvis, 1967.

A study that was conducted showed that this correlation comes from the high school level where for those who fail to take the more advanced level math classes, they are less likely to select science, math or engineering majors in college and this affects their career choices.

The study showed that by the time they get to high school level, males are more likely to enroll in advanced math and science classes which are electives than females. This is a conclusion that is also backed by the National Science Foundation and the National Science Board. It is also a statistic backed by the current number of people in the workforce. In the U.S., in 1993, the workforce had only 8% of engineers and 9% of physicists being women. This is contrasted with the.....