1. Career Counseling
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2. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Why is it needed?
Career theories, like most theories, were developed on the Anglo-Saxon middle class male. This makes them less effective when working with women, minorities or gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people.
Research on the career development for gay men and lesbian women is minimal and research for bisexual and transgendered individuals is nonexistent.
Sex role socialization begins early in life and is reinforced by parents, neighbors, teachers, friends, the media and the church etc.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

3. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Why is it needed?
Occupational stereotyping also starts early and young children have definite ideas about what girls can do and what boys can do.
Gender role socialization influences the development of career interests in gays and lesbians differently than heterosexuals.
Gays and lesbians internalize societal stereotypes differently then heterosexuals and tend to be more gender non-traditional.
If gays and lesbians are discouraged from pursuing non-traditional careers they may find more frustration and less satisfaction with the resulting career choices.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

4. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Why is it needed?
Gays and lesbians may internalize negative messages about their sexuality and voluntarily restrict their own career choices (e.g. studies show that many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals restrict themselves in opportunities to work with children).
Adolescent girls also learn early that gender biases exist. Girls are often either ignored or discriminated against.
The Null Environment: An environment that neither actively discourages or encourages but just ignores the individual.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

5. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Why is it needed?
When groups are stereotyped and discriminated against, it takes a lot of energy to combat the discrimination and vocational development usually becomes delayed.
After years of discrimination and bias, an individual’s identity is affected, and this is even more true, and more severe, when sexual identity is also a concern.
When individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered enter the workforce, discrimination usually is overt and continues.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

6. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Why is it needed?
Women are often boxed into gender roles.
Women experience a glass ceiling: A concept that describes women’s inability to ascend to the top of many corporate ladders.
Lesbian women are affected by the glass ceiling and also by bias and prejudice regarding their sexual orientation.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

7. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Gender Specific Outcomes
Avoidance of school subjects in which women feel they are inferior, such as math.
Lower expectations for success, as women underestimate their abilities.
Lower self-efficacy beliefs when career choices are nontraditional.
Increase in role conflict and role overload. When women go into the work force the expectation is that they will still do the majority of the housework.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

8. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Nonsexist Counseling
Men and women should be treated equally.
Clients should be thought of as individuals and not as male or female.
Counselors need to be aware of how career counseling can be sexist.
Nonsexist counselors work hard to avoid bias or differentiation between sexes in the counseling process.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

9. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Gender Aware Counseling
The construct of gender is recognized.
Client concerns are viewed within a larger societal context other than just male or female.
Counselors confront gender injustices.
The counseling relationship is collaborative.
The client has the power and freedom to make his or her own choices.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

10. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Feminist Counseling and Feminist Identity
Feminist counseling maintains that:
Society has shaped women’s behavior and therefore the personal is the political.
2. Counselors should be no more powerful than their clients.
Feminist Identity Development Stages: Passive acceptance, revelation, embeddedness—emancipation, synthesis and active commitment.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

11. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
How to Change the Status Quo
Inform and challenge women about taking on traditional gender roles without thought, and provide options.
Teach clients how to alter gender and homophobic based self-efficacy beliefs.
Inform clients about the importance of entering the math and science fields.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

12. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
The Race/Gender Ecological Model of Career Development by Cook, Heppner and O’Brien (2001).
Human behavior results from:
interactions between a person and his or her environment.
a conglomeration of individual, interpersonal and sociocultural factors.
Vocational behavior can best be understood as:
an act that occurs in a context and that context is imperative in understanding the behavior.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

13. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
The Race/Gender Ecological Model of Career Development by Cook, Heppner and O’Brien (2001) (continued).
People live in an interacting social world.
Every person has a gender and a race (and a sexual orientation).
These factors help shape decisions about a career.
Because of these factors, people will face either opportunity, discrimination or at times, both.
Career behavior is believed to be shaped by the interrelationships among the subsystems in a person’s world.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

14. Career Counseling in the Context of Gender and Sexual Orientation
The Race/Gender Ecological Model of Career Development by Cook, Heppner and O’Brien (2001) (continued).
The ecological part of the model comes from Urie Bronfenbenner’s work who identified four major subsystems that influence human behavior:
Macrosystem
Values, laws, customs etc. that affect
Exosystem the individual
Social settings that affect the person (e.g.
Mesosystem the board of directions of a workplace).
Connections between the microsystems
Microsystem that foster development.
An individuals immediate surroundings
The Individual
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”

15. Career Counseling Presentation Resources
Gysbers, N. C., Heppner, M. J. & Johnston, J. A. (2003). Career counseling: Process, issues, and techniques, 2nd ed. Boston, MA.: Allyn & Bacon.
Brown, D. (2003). Career information, career counseling, and career development, 8th ed. Boston, MA.: Allyn & Bacon.
“Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2004”