The relationship between career maturity and gender

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to compare the career maturity of undergraduates at Ball State University by gender. It also analyzed the completion of career developmental tasks and determine if there were differences in career maturity between men and women. The respondents (n=224) consisted of 64 men and 160 women undergraduates during the spring of 1998. Of the 340 subjects in the random sample, completed surveys were received from 224 producing a response rate of 65.9%. Data were collected on 56 variables, describing personal characteristics, career exploration activities, related work experiences, and job-search activities.Women were more likely to declare a major (92.5%), chose a career objective (88.8%), and be comfortable with their career decision (74.4%) than men (87.5%, 87.%, and 59.4% respectively). Men and women were fairly similar in their use of resources to help them determine their academic major and career objective. Men were more likely to talk with Career Services (29.9%), talk with someone from the Counseling Center (14.1%), use the Career Resource Center (28.1%), use the university and public library (34.4%), use the World Wide Web (29.7%), and conduct an informational interview (50.0%). Women were more likely to talk with an Academic Advisor (76.9%), talk with a faculty member (58.1%), talk with the Learning Center (15.0%), talk with parents (83.3), and take a career test (38.1%).In terms of networking activities and employment activities, men tended to answer more questions in the affirmative than women. Women tended to answer in the affirmative for questions concerning: using a network (61.3%), and planning to attend graduate school immediately after college graduation (28.8%) more often than men (51.5% and 21.9% respectively). Men tended to answer in the affirmative more often than women in networking and employment activity questions concerning: being registered with the Candidate Referral Service (3.1%), attending a career fair on-campus (18.8%), attending a career fair offcampus (14.1%), beginning a job search (29.7%), having an interview (29.7%), receiving an offer for professional employment (25.0%), and accepting an offer for professional employment (15.6%).Each student was assigned a career maturity level which was equal to the number of career maturity activities they had completed divided by the total number of career maturity variables. An average score was then calculated for men and women from the individual scores. The career maturity score for men (34%) was not significantly higher than the score for women (32%). Gender had no effect on career maturity.