Journal of Career Assessment

This model focuses on three motivation dimensions, career salience, career aspiration, and mastery, in an effort to understand better why women contribute less to the arts, sciences, and humanities. The model, conceived in the 1970s and extended in the 1980s, is grounded in social learning theory and emphasizes how sex role socialization affects women's career motivation. This model guided the design of a longitudinal study, first funded in 1978, for which data was collected in 1980, 1990, and 1991 to 1993. Participants in 1980 were 9th and 12th grade students in six high schools in the Midwest: two rural, two suburban, and two inner city. Measures included to test the model are briefly presented, as are summary findings.

This article reviews the applicability of self-efficacy theory to the career assessment of women. The article begins by summarizing Bandura's self-efficacy theory, including its particular relevance to women's career development. Next, the domains of occupational, scientific—technical, and mathematics self-efficacy are reviewed, followed by those represented by Holland's RIASEC model and Rooney and Osipow's (1992; Osipow, Temple, & Rooney, 1993) Task-Specific Occupational Self-Efficacy Scale (TSOSS). The article concludes with a review of work on the relationship of self-efficacy to vocational interests and on counseling implications of self-efficacy theory.

The field of career development lacks a generally accepted assessment protocol for women of color. This lack is fueled by the breadth of the definition of the category, women of color. In this article, we limit the category to African American, Asian American, Hispanic or Latina American, and Native American women living in the United States. While acknowledging significant within-group and between-group differences among these women, the authors look at the components of the career development literature related to women and various ethnic and racial groups. The authors review and critique the Ward and Bingham (1993) and the Fouad and Bingham (1995) models and discuss ways to expand these existing models. This discussion is then used to suggest a four-step process to career assessment for women of color.

The circumscription and compromise theory of vocational aspirations draws attention to the possibility that many adolescents may unnecessarily limit their vocational options. This article describes key elements of the theory, particularly its emphasis on children's perceptions of occupational sextype, and the changes the theory requires in how to conceptualize and assess vocational aspirations. It also describes a theory based Mapping Vocational Challenges¹ (MVC; Lapan, Loehr-Lapan, & Tupper, 1995) activity that helps adolescents map and discuss the beliefs and background factors that can lead them to rule out careers they might actually find interesting and perform well.

This article discusses how theory may be translated into practice in assessing women's perceived career barriers. It describes a theoretical perspective that is useful in considering the construct of perceived barriers, namely, social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), and summarizes the empirical literature regarding barriers, with particular attention to practical applications of the evidence. It then discusses how counselors might assess women's perceived barriers during career counseling and possible counseling interventions to address clients' identified barriers.

The argument that gender-specific career development theories neglect important categories of life concerns for both women and men is considered, and the implications for assessment and counseling are discussed. Recommendations for expanding theory, assessment, and counseling are provided.