Strategies for combatinggendered perceptions of careers

Dorota BourneSchool of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London,

London, UK, and

Mustafa F. OzbilginNorwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Abstract

Purpose – Earlier work on career choice has identified that career choice involves genderedprocesses which lead to differentiated career outcomes for women and men. However, this literatureremained anaemic in offering career counselling strategies for addressing the negative impacts ofthese processes. The paper aims to explore the creativity cycle and other tools derived from personalconstruct psychology (PCP) and other feminist literature as potential means for dissolving genderedperceptions of various professions and organisational practices.

Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper.

Findings – The paper argues that PCP can provide a theoretical and methodological framework fordiscussing how dichotomous and gender identified the perceptions of professions can be and how suchperceptions might be challenged.

Practical implications – This theory and its techniques allow us an exploration of the flexibility ofone’s constructions system, which determines a person’s ability to construe alternative views and todevelop new ways of understanding oneself and others.

Originality/value – The PCP’s potential as a technique to combat gendered perceptions of a careeris examined.

Keywords Gender, Perception, Careers, Career guidance, Individual psychology

Paper type Conceptual paper

IntroductionOther papers in this special issue draw on a cross-national study which reportsfindings of a questionnaire survey among MBA students and identifies marked genderdifferences in career choices of students in all of the countries under study. Genderedcareer choice is one of the root causes of persistent gender inequalities at work and inlife. Reflecting on the findings of the other papers in the special issue, we propose theuse of a technique, repertory grids, for combating and addressing gender differences incareer choice. Gender equality and diversity at work can make a positive contributionto organisational performance (Krishnan and Park, 2005; Gratton et al., 2007). Researchon gender and professions has extensively documented negative impacts of genderedperceptions on career choice (Correll, 2001; Michie and Nelson, 2006; Kusku et al., 2007)as resilient to change over time, across sectors of employment and internationally (e.g.Watt and Eccles, 2008; Francis, 2002).

Despite extensive documentation of the interplay between gender and careerchoices in this literature, identification of antecedents, correlates and consequences ofgendered career choices does not translate directly into strategies for combating thenegative consequences and root causes of gendered career choices. Indeed, there has

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Career Development InternationalVol. 13 No. 4, 2008pp. 320-332q Emerald Group Publishing Limited1362-0436DOI 10.1108/13620430810880817

been insufficient interest in offering practical strategies for addressing the negativeconsequences of gendered perceptions on career choice. Often such strategies arepresented as afterthoughts in “policy/practice implications” in research papers whichdocument gendered nature of career choice. In this paper, we seek to fill this gap in theliterature by exploring the potential of personal construct psychology in both revealinggendered perceptions and combating them.

Negative consequences of gendered perceptions of careersCareer is an overarching concept which refers to the totality of an individual’s choicesand experiences of work across time and situated settings. In a similar way, gender isthe social construction of an individual’s biological sex across time and in situatedsettings. As such, gender stereotyping has a multi-component nature (Six and Eckes,1991). Gender relations are infused in every aspect of an individual’s work and lifeexperiences. Therefore, careers of individuals are imbued with different genderrelations across life courses and institutional settings.

Although gendered perceptions are not the sole arbiters of career choices, processesand outcomes, gendered perceptions play significant roles in career processes andoutcomes of individuals. Forms of inequality and segregation based on genderedperceptions are often reported in the extant literature as important economic and socialconcerns. Therefore, combating gender inequities has been taken up as an importantchallenge of social and economic regulation in the past few decades.

There have been considerable gains in the field of sex equality in advancedeconomies over the last century. However, this optimism does not apply across theboard to all aspects of social and economic life. Research shows that occupational sexsegregation, i.e. unequal representation of women and men across occupational groups(horizontal sex segregation) and across levels of occupational hierarchies (vertical sexsegregation), has survived relatively unscathed over time (Anker, 2004). Despite someimprovements in vertical sex segregation, as women started entering seniormanagement roles in greater numbers across the world (Anker, 2004), it has longbeen recognized that horizontal sex segregation has proved unchanging. For example,Burke and Mattis (2007) demonstrated that women are worryingly under-representedin science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers across the world.

The persistence of horizontal sex segregation presents a problematic situation as itprovides the objective basis of gendered perceptions, which foster sex typing of jobsand professions. Gender segregation is also important because it colours the perceptionof a profession (Lent et al., 2000), which in turn may affect an individual’s choice of acareer.

Gendered perceptions of professions affect the way women and men carve outcareers and navigate their career choices, which requires policy and research attentionif the negative consequences of gendered perceptions are to be tackled. However,studies in the field do not present a positive view and identify that organisations haveill-conceived tendencies to offer solutions which are unsophisticated and quick fix innature (Rubin, 1997; Cockburn, 1991) or to adopt a deficit approach to combatinginequality and gendered perceptions which assume that women should be fixed(trained or educated) as they lack the requisite forms of human capital (Eccles, 1986).There is also a tendency to assume that only men hold gendered perceptions ofprofessions. Conversely, Fernandez et al. (2006) and Kusku et al. (2007) noted that both

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women and men hold gendered perceptions and suffer from negative consequences ofgendered perceptions in choosing and pursuing their careers.

Combating gendered perceptions is only a part of the complex and sophisticated setof strategies which should be adopted in order to address gendered inequalities atwork. See, for example, Cockburn’s (1991) short and long agendas of change forcombating gendered inequalities at work, or Cornelius and Clapp’s (2004) study, whichproposed personal construct psychology in order to promote gender equality throughre-conceptualisation of organisational learning.

In order to formulate strategies for tackling gendered perceptions of professions, wefocused on three important considerations:

(1) promoting exposure to varied experiences and contexts;

(2) increasing individual awareness of career alternatives; and

(3) recognising cognitive and social background differences among individuals indesign of interventions.

We examined each of these strategies for combating gendered perceptions of aprofession in turn.

Exposure to varied experiences and contextsWomen and men experience sexist stereotypes and gendered perceptions in differentways. Experience of gender inequalities and stereotypes offers extensive opportunitiesfor learning across different cultural contexts institutional settings at different pointsin their life courses. This learning may enable women and men to use strategies ofcoping which they have developed in one domain of their lives when they facegendered perceptions and stereotypes again in different settings.

Gendered perceptions are commonplace across all aspects of an individual’scareer. Malach-Pines and Kapsi-Baruch (2007) suggest that gender differences incareer choice are socially constructed. Drawing on a study across five countries(Israel, the UK, Turkey, Cyprus and Hungary) they show that cross-nationalvariation is largely due to cultural differences in the social construction of genderand choice of careers in entrepreneurship and management. In a similar study,Gushue and Whitson (2006) suggest that both gender and ethnicity shape the careerchoices and experiences of Black and Latina girls. The authors call for careercounsellors to be aware of the significance of context in understanding the waycareers are gendered and ethnicised.

Operating across varied contexts, with exposure to different forms of inequality, canhelp individuals develop capacities to recognise and tackle negative genderedassumptions more effectively. Exposure to different contexts can help them questionthe assumption that gendered perceptions are natural. We examine at the end of thispaper how a repertory grids technique can be instrumental in exposing individuals to awider repertoire of strategies for combating gendered perceptions.

The density of the learning experience also leads to higher self-efficacy and outcomeexpectations (Williams and Subich, 2006). Therefore, varied and enriched learningexperiences can help women and men develop their self-efficacy and build upconfidence to expect better and more sophisticated career outcomes.

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Increasing individual awareness of career alternativesHaving an awareness of career alternatives is an important requisite for an individualto break vicious cycles of gendered perception and inequality. Muldoon and Reilly(2003) reveal that the availability of career alternatives has a significant impact on thecareer choice of students. Ozbilgin et al. (2005) propose that career choice has twoconditions:

(1) career choices are available for the individual; and

(2) the individual can recognise these alternative choices.

Therefore, career choice has both an external (objective) and an internal (subjective)component. Gender stereotyping of professions as well as gender discrimination tendto have a limiting impact on individual repertoires of career choices (Stratton et al.,2005). However, Tokar and Jome (1998) note that vocational interests may helpindividuals break free of traditional career paths which are congruent with their genderidentities. Nevertheless, the process of sex typing creates job boundaries, which limitthe career imagination of women and men. Therefore, in order for individuals toovercome gendered career choices, they need to have access to a wider range ofalternatives and examples, and enhance their imagination and topography of careerchoices in ways that free them from traditional gender biases.

Different recipes for different individualsOne of the most important challenges facing efforts to combat gendered perceptions ofprofessions is the difficulty in formulating strategies which can recognise and cater forindividual requirements, when such initiatives often target groups. Reportedly, equalityand diversity interventions suffer from several problems (Liff and Cameron, 1997). First,there are frequent reports of backlash. Second, some initiatives are considered“preaching to the converted”, if they do not include participants from dominant groups inthe organisation. Third and more importantly, equality interventions are not wellreceived when they are designed in a way which does not recognise differences amongindividuals. Blanket interventions would be too unsophisticated to deal with complexand subtle differences in individual circumstances and choices. Therefore, any attemptsto offer strategies for addressing gendered perceptions of careers should be receptive toindividual differences.

In the following section, we examine the suitability of the repertory grid techniqueto deliver on the three requirements, as described above, for tackling genderedperceptions of professions, through counselling, awareness and training interventions.

The repertory grid technique in career counsellingThere are many methods of identifying how individuals carve out jobs, careers, andoccupations for themselves and how they navigate their paths in their chosen fieldsand professions of work. Traditional career counselling interviews are one method ofoffering insight into individual strategies for job crafting and navigation. However,there are not many methods that provide an explicit definition of a person’s preverbalor tacit knowledge of a career, as it is often difficult to describe. The repertory gridtechnique is unique in this respect. It enables the identification of the way in which aperson construes a particular idea by attaching verbal and explicit symbols ormeanings, which are termed “personal constructs”, to that idea.

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The repertory grid technique was developed by George Kelly as part of hiswell-elaborated theory of personal constructs (Kelly, 1955/1991). At the core of thistheory lies a notion that individuals anticipate the world around them by using theirown and unique set of bio-polar dimensions of meaning, so-called personal constructs.Constructs form patterns that enable us to chart our behaviour. They can be explicitlyformulated or implicitly acted upon. However well or poorly formulated, our constructsystem can always be developed by increasing its repertory. By altering our constructsystem we can provide better fits between them and certain areas of our lives.

Personal construct psychology offers a framework for tackling workplaceinequality by focusing on what lies “below the surface” and making it visible(Cornelius, 2005, p. 213). It enables us to engage in a dialogue on issues that are not onlypersonally sensitive but also potentially resistant to change. The strength of PCP ascompared to traditional approaches focused on strategy or practices lies in the abilityof this framework to tackle the breadth and the width of the problems behindworkplace inequality.

Personal construct psychology has the tools and techniques to access core featuresof an individual’s construing at its disposal. Access to central and presumablyimportant constructs is an aid to understanding of the personal meaning systems(Neimeyer et al., 2000). The repertory grid technique provides a means for identifyingpeople’s attitudes or beliefs (see Stewart and Stewart, 1982), not through the lenses ofthe researcher but through the personal construct of the research participant.

Practical applications of the repertory gridThe repertory grid interview can play a central role in our attempt to make sense of therespondent’s construing of the world. The technique became popular amongconstructivist psychologists as a convenient means of accessing the features of aperson’s meaning system and has since been applied extensively in environmental andarchitectural design, career counselling and business applications (Jankowicz, 1990;Neimeyer et al., 2000; Stewart and Stewart, 1982). Business applications of therepertory grid have been especially prominent in knowledge management. Grids offera sophisticated tool for tacit knowledge elicitation and clarification of some aspects ofit. The conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge though the use of gridshas attracted a lot of managerial attention (Jankowicz, 2001a). The repertory gridtechnique is also widely used in human resource management (HRM) (Jankowicz,1990), where it can aid performance appraisal, job evaluation, training design orgeneral job analysis. It is the ability of this technique to elicit knowledge at a veryspecific level that enables us to analyse the difference between behaviours that lead tosuccess or effectiveness in organisations as opposed to those that fail.

Grids can also be used in team building and climate setting, where a mutuallyimportant topic from a managerial point of view is analysed by means of groupexamination and exchange of constructs used by team members. This application ofthe technique is also linked to organisational development applications. Theseinterventions take place at all levels of the organisation starting from an individuallevel, where grids are used in coaching or vocational guidance, to group level, whichcan be enhanced by team development or group goal setting, to organisational andprocess applications. Interventions at the organisational level range from thosefocusing on organisational structure, design and culture to management and functional

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processes such as marketing, planning, decision-making and the development ofexpert systems.

Vocational guidance through the repertory grid interview has resulted in asignificant body of work (Edmonds, 1979; Davies, 1985; Cochran, 1987; Neimeyer,1989). By using jobs as elements on the grid we can elicit counselling clients’constructs, which they use to differentiate between occupations (for examples, seeNeimeyer, 1989; Smith et al., 1978). The elements can be provided by an interviewer orchosen together with the interviewee. For the purposes of overcoming gender bias theyshould contain jobs that are strongly gendered such as, for example, a manager, a pilot,engineer or nurse, as well as jobs that are relatively gender neutral, for example, anoffice worker. It is important to note that these occupations should provide ourinterviewee with a variety of elements.

Following construct elicitation this type of a grid will help us define client’svocational construct system, in particular its content, structure and responsiveness tochange (Neimeyer, 1989). The analysis can also reveal the level of construct systemdifferentiation related to the maturity of one’s vocational development and possibledilemmas linked to a particular occupational choice. We can enrich the process of gridinterview and add a dimension of gender to it by using Honey’s (1979) technique. Thisprovides a person with an overall construct, for example, “male versus female” that isthen used to capture the interviewee’s process of construing around the subjectsummarised under the supplied construct. Honey’s technique offers an opportunity toclarify the picture of one’s construing of a certain topic and its relation to a specificconstruct. It can give us a clearer picture of the relationship between all constructselicited during the interview and a supplied construct that is of a particular interest orimportance to the interviewee and a researcher.

Key elements of the repertory grid in career counsellingThe repertory grid is a generic but highly flexible technique with a great variety ofapplications (Winter, 1992). As an interview method it is relatively complex andrequires considerable skill in order to be tailored to the needs of the interviewee. Thereis a vast amount of literature exemplifying different designs of the grid according tothe requirements of the interview (see Boxer, 1981; Parker, 1981; Ravenette, 1975;Smith et al., 1978).

In this section we will focus on the elements of the grid that have a particularrelevance to career counselling and therefore should receive special attention at thestages of interview design and analysis.

Grid contentAccording to Kelly (1955/1991), the content of one’s constructs presents the richestsource of data that we can obtain from the repertory grid interview. Although therepertory grid technique involves filling in a record sheet with an interviewee in orderto define the relationship between elements and constructs, the accent of inquiry is tolisten closely to the respondent. For this reason, the term “repertory grid interview”should not evoke the connotations people have with traditional questionnaires andpsychometric tests as used in psychology.

The construct elicitation process can already reveal some differences in the level ofclarity an interviewee has regarding certain constructs. The role of a counsellor is to

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pick up those differences and use them when describing the grid. The number ofconstructs we can elicit during the procedure varies greatly. However, the moremeaningful the process is to the interviewee, the more likely it is to provide constructson the topic.

Additionally, the grid is likely to illustrate the constructs that the interviewee has aninterest and/or some expertise in, has to confront in his/her work, and has thoughtabout before (Jankowicz, 2004, p. 81).

An interesting and powerful aspect of the grid lies in the bi-polar nature of theconstructs that are elicited. It is of great importance to pay attention to both poles of theconstruct, as the full meaning of one’s construct can be fully understood only by takingits contrast into account. By reading both poles we can examine not only the behaviourthe person chooses to engage in, but also the behaviour that the interviewee is rejecting(Fransella, 1995, pp. 57-8). It is therefore possible to understand not only the genderingof the career choice, but also the gendering of the way certain career choices arerejected.

Diversity and recurring themes of one’s constructs are another aspect that can beuseful to look at. They can give some insights into alternative constructs that theperson has available for a particular element. Recurring themes or constructs clusterscan be used in order to understand individual’s unique occupational outlook (Neimeyer,1989). One particular advantage of this attribute of the repertory grid technique is thatit makes it possible to read the depth and breadth of an individual’s career choice andidentify implications of these variations by gender.

Grid structureThe personal construct system of an individual consists of constructs at various levelsof cognitive awareness. At the lowest level of cognitive awareness, there are thepreverbal constructs. They represent the constructs that might be used by anindividual despite not having a verbal or word symbol attached to it. They can bebrought to life either in a person’s behaviour or by verbalisation. Making the preverbalconstruct more explicit with the help of the repertory grid technique enables anindividual to verbalise the construct that might have otherwise remained at a low levelof awareness and not fully understood (Jankowicz, 2001a).

After the level of preverbal constructs, there are the subordinate and thensuperordinate constructs. The subordinate constructs such as “monotonous versusinteresting” or “people oriented versus technology oriented” are relatively easy to elicitand the repertory grid interview can assist us in our attempt to make sense ofrespondents’ construing of the world.

The last level of the construct system is filled by superordinate constructs that areof fundamental importance: core constructs such as “right versus wrong” or“dependence versus freedom”. An awareness of them is essential for understanding theworld of another human being, or of ourselves (Hinkle, 1965, p. 34; cited in Neimeyeret al., 2000). Their elicitation can be difficult, however. There is a tool that can aid theaccessing of people’s superordinate constructs. The laddering technique, introduced byHinkle (1965), represents a convenient means of exploring core features of a person’smeaning system. The laddering technique is particularly helpful for identifyingconstructs that are tacit or more difficult to articulate verbally than the subordinateconstructs.

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There are two structural grid measures that are especially relevant to occupationalcounselling:

(1) differentiation; and

(2) ordination.

Differentiation is the number of different constructs used by the person, known as thelevel of differentiation or cognitive complexity (Winter, 1992). This measure illustrateshow multidimensional one’s construing of behaviour is and it is more closely linked topersonality trait theories than the personal construct psychology (Fransella andBannister, 1977). However, it can be a very useful dimension of one’s grid. According toBodden (1970; cited in Winter, 1992) the higher the complexity level of people’soccupational construing, the more likely they are to make a vocational choicecongruent with their personality style. Furthermore, the judgement of “likedoccupations” is less cognitively complex than that of “disliked occupations”.

Ordination assesses the extent to which interviewees can integrate theirconstructions by using superordinate constructs representing core values and beliefs(Winter, 1992). It is based on the assumption that one’s construct system is organisedin hierarchical manner and at the bottom, or the core, of this system lie our core valuesor superordinate constructs that govern our behaviour.

Responsiveness to changeThe repertory grid technique has the potential to prioritise personal values by means ofthe resistance to change (RTC) technique (Fransella and Bannister, 1977). It enables usto identify where, in any subsequent intervention, change may be possible, and whereit would be resisted, since the values at stake, for example freedom or independence,are too central and might not be open to argument.

It is arguable whether the RTC phenomenon is a useful process (Jankowicz, 1996).Fransella (1995) suggested that the term “resistance” could be replaced with the morepositive term “persistence”. According to personal construct theory, the personresisting change does so only in the eyes of those expecting this change to happen.Hence, we should perceive this phenomenon as a matter of choosing not to changerather than that of resistance. Coming from this perspective, we might want to considerwhat kind of status quo people are actually trying to maintain by choosing not tochange (Fransella, 1995, p. 83).

Career choice interventions for career counsellingWe propose three specific interventions through which personal construct psychologymay be used in order to combat the negative effects of gendered perceptions on careerchoices.

Exposure to varied experiences and contextsThe construct system of every individual is in a process of constant change as weengage in experiments that test our predictions of reality. The validation orinvalidation of our predictions influences the shape of our construct system. Eachconstruct has a limited number of situations that it can be applied to. These situationsare termed the “range of convenience” of a construct. One of the ways in which wechange our perception of reality is by extending the range of convenience of our

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constructs, for example, making them apply to more events. This aspect can beespecially important in increasing self-esteem. For example, a woman who performsvery well in a female-only environment but finds herself intimidated by men and thusless effective in a mixed or male-dominated environment can try to extend her range ofconvenience by trying to apply constructs that enable her good performance insituations or environments she currently finds difficult. This applies equally to menwho hold and are exposed to negative and positive gendered assumptions in their jobroles. Organisational opportunities for rotation through which individuals can testtheir competences across a number of job roles can help break some of these negativegendered assumptions, allowing for greater interaction between women and menacross the organisation. Such varied exposure can help the individual find strength intheir higher achievements or the positive gender stereotypes that they face across anumber of job roles. Drawing on these positive experiences, the individual maycounterbalance the negative impacts of the experiences of low performance or negativegender stereotypes in other settings.

Extending career repertoiresA change in the construct system can also occur when new constructs are created andadded to our repertoire. These processes occur by completing the experience cycle andthe creativity cycle. The experience cycle enables the person to put their newconstructs/predictions to the test and confirm or disconfirm their predictions. Forexample, assertiveness (assertive versus not assertive) can be added to one’s repertoireas a good alternative to constructs such as “aggressive versus passive” which did notenable sufficient scope for assertive behaviour in the past. If a prediction that assertivebehaviour can lead to a desired result is confirmed, the construct would be added to thepersonal repertoire of constructs applied to the particular event. The creativity cycletakes the individual through stages of loose and tight construing and enables theformulation of new constructs, which can then be used and tested in the experiencecycle. It can be argued that for the optimal functioning of an individual, the successfulcompletion of these cycles is necessary. As we are faced with changing situations andreality, we constantly modify our construct system in a way that will enable us to formsuccessful predictions about the events that surround us.

Counselling interventions that can help change a person’s construing on a certainsubject, like, for example, gendered notion of professions, can involve guidancethrough the creativity and experience cycles with special attention devoted toexpanding one’s range of convenience or/and developing new constructs and testingthem. This group of interventions would be exploration oriented and should result ingreater self-confidence and hopefully some change in person’s construing that willopen new behavioural avenues for them.

Different recipes for different levels of awarenessLow differentiation (cognitive complexity) in construing of occupations has beenlinked to career choice characterised by high “ego development”. Individuals with lowcognitive complexity are also likely to make premature integrations with insufficientinformation. Holding rigid gendered assumptions about career choices, such as thatwomen are poor scientists, when such essentialist beliefs are widely discredited byempirical evidence, is a sign that the person may have low cognitive complexity.

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Therefore, clients like this should be assisted in career alternatives generation andprovision of positive information related to their occupational choice. This should befollowed by a validation of constructs related to occupations (through the experiencecycle) which will strengthen the individual’s integrative capacity. As mentioned before,people with high cognitive complexity are likely to choose jobs congruent with theirpersonality styles. This is especially important when dealing with gender bias whichcan influence one’s career choice and disturb this decision-making process. Achieving asituation of high differentiation and high integration should lead to more advancedidentity development, improved distinctiveness of interests, greater decidedness andbetter self-efficacy.

Vocational counselling should address the importance of the above issues in careerchoice decision-making process. Information as well as exploration orientedinterventions through the application of PCP techniques such as the repertory gridinterview can help us develop an understanding of the way in which clients interprettheir experience. By doing so we can assist them in altering their vocational construingso that their career choice could be congruent with their potential and aspirationsrather than with social limitations.

The value of the repertory grid in management training and development has beenrecognised and is already utilised in some programmes of executive education (e.g.Jankowicz, 2001b). This technique is applied as a tool to aid decision making andchange management processes, as well as a means for encouraging managers andmanagement students to reflect on and critically evaluate their own capabilities andtalents. Although not directly used as a career counselling tool, it fulfils a similarfunction. Students attending such courses can identify their areas of excellence,develop talents and augment personal awareness through constructivist techniques.Considering the turbulent and unpredictable nature of the organizational environmentin which senior and executive managers currently operate, the need for reflectiveself-awareness of one’s personal capabilities is ever-increasing, and with it the scopefor the use of methods such as repertory grids, which have the potential to enhancethese skills.

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Further reading

Kirchmeyer, C. (2006), “The different effects of family on objective career success across gender:a test of alternative explanations”, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 68, pp. 323-46.

Sansone, C., Isaac, J.D. and Morgan, C. (2001), “The role of interest in understanding the careerchoices of female and male college students”, Sex Roles, Vol. 44 Nos 5/6, pp. 295-320.

Sax, L.J. and Bryant, A.N. (2006), “The impact of college on sex-atypical career choices of menand women”, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 68, pp. 52-63.

Corresponding authorDorota Bourne can be contacted at: d.bourne@qmul.ac.uk

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