1. We need to become aware of our own conscious and non-conscious attitudes, expectations, and practices in the counseling interview.
There are a number of subtle and not-so-subtle things we do both verbally and nonverbally in our counseling that communicate to boys and girls what is acceptable or appropriate and what is not. In our interviews, how do we react when a girl says she wants to become a pilot, an engineer, or an auto mechanic? How do we help girls plan and choose their school courses and programs with open options? By the same token, how do we react when a boy says he wants to be a nurse? How much do our own sex-role stereotypes and expectations affect our counseling behavior? Among the things we might do to counteract our biases is to help females think of themselves as persons, to affirm their sense of personal worth, to face and work through their identity and role conflicts, to learn to say "I can." We need to be aware of the development stage the woman is at in her life span and "where she is coming from" as a person and as a woman.
2. We need to become increasingly aware of sex bias in guidance materials, tests and inventories, and our own bias in interpreting and using those materials.
Schlossberg and Goodman (1972) have called attention to the channeling that can occur through use of biased interest inventories. The National Institute of Education (NIE) sponsored a national conference on this topic, resulting in a manual of "Guidelines for Assessment of Sex Bias and Sex Fairness in Career Interest Inventories" (NIE, 1974). It seems to me counselors have to be equally sensitive to other kinds of instruments, especially in career planning and exploration. A recent study by Birk, Cooper, and Tanney (1973) of illustrations in an array of career literature-including the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance, Volumes I and II, 1972, ana1 the Science Research Associates Occupational Briefs, 1973-revealed the same kinds of racial and sexual stereotypes that have been found in the children's textbooks and picture books: women and minorities appeared only infrequently in comparison with white males and often were in passive, helping, subordinate roles. If there is one major area in which counselors have been criticized, it is in our selection, use, and interpretation of tests, earlier with minorities and more recently with women; we would be well advised to examine our own test interpretation practices and to help eliminate from use those that are clearly biased in the way they present opportunities for men and women in the world of work.
3. We need to know and help clients obtain accurate information about trends both in the world of work and in the larger society.
We have to do a better job not only of getting accurate information ourselves but of helping boys and girls get the information they need and to use it. They need information about themselves, the labor force (present and projected), work environments, alternatives, and decision processes. Because of this expectation of marriage and the Prince Charming myth, many girls do not seek education-occupational information. Presumably if one is seeking a job merely as a stopgap until marriage, one does not need much information. When examining the human life cycle of women today and the second half of her life, ask what kind of information does she need? When, how, and under what circumstances do we get across the reality of what is happening to the woman in American society-that she may be working 25-35 years out of her life even if she marries and takes time out for childbearing? And how do boys obtain and react to that same kind of information? How do we help him and her to internalize the information? One way might be to provide group guidance and group counseling experiences in which boys and girls can talk together about these trends and what they mean in relation to both male and female goals and roles and family patterns and the possible androgynous society of the future.
4. We need to help young men and women become increasingly aware of the options available to them in a pluralistic society-in education, occupation, life styles, and career patterns.
We may have to help both boys and girls think through and plan for the multiple roles they may have as workers and parents. They need to be aware of the variety of life styles and family and work patterns from which they can choose and of potential conflicts involved in choosing one pattern over another (for example, single life, multiple children, two-person career, dual career without children, etc.). Particularly, we need to help female clients consider a wide range of educational and occupational options in addition to the traditional stereotypic ones. This becomes extremely important at a time when the traditional options, such as teaching, for example, are becoming less available. Society is beginning to realize that college is not the only road to success and that other excellent opportunities exist in such institutions as vocational-technical schools. With the small percentages of women in the skilled trades, we should encourage adolescent girls to explore new and emerging training programs and occupations and expose them to contact with women in atypical fields. While we need competent secretaries, teachers, and nurses (of both sexes), we do not want women programmed into limited types, numbers, or levels of occupations; we want to help female clients choose from that larger pool of alternatives those appropriate to their abilities, goals, interests, and motivations.
5. We need to help young men and women learn the processes involved in decision making.
If counselors really are concerned about human development, they have to help each individual, regardless of race, sex, or age, to know that s/he can choose in accord with his or her values, abilities, motivations, and preferences from a variety of life options. Clients need to be helped to explore the alternatives, the probability and possibility of achieving the alternatives, and the consequences of choices they make for both themselves and the significant others in their lives. They need to be able to examine themselves as risk takers, to critically evaluate the information about self and options, and to synthesize or integrate it as they think about themselves in relation to society. They need to be encouraged to challenge traditional assumptions and expectancies about roles and to realize that changing women's opportunities for different life patterns also have implications for work, family, and leisure patterns of men.
The problems of decision making for women have been cited often in the professional literature-the lack of planning orientation; the fear of loss of femininity if she chooses a career; the shift from vocational goals to marriage goals from junior to senior high; the assumption of marriage as the modal role and not perceiving the dual roles of marriage and work (or other patterns) as viable options. All of these contribute to the view that females do not have choices or decisions to make, that they do not have alternatives to choose from since they are programmed from early childhood for the one option of marriage and motherhood. If females are to develop their potentials to reduce the gap between what they do and what they can do, counselors must help them know and be able to choose and decide from diverse life patterns, from traditional nuclear family to single parent to single person to dichotomous or multiple roles; they need to be helped to know that they can have goals of their own and an identity of their own.
6. We need to provide female clients with a variety of role models with whom they can identify and from whom they can learn that multiple roles are possible, desirable, and real.
The importance of putting females in touch with women who are in nontraditional roles cannot be over-emphasized. Many of the early and late adolescents we counsel today are familiar only with the female image to which they have been exposed at home, in their school books, and in the media. Counselors can help broaden their views and expose them to wider options by helping identify women in the school and community who have chosen all kinds of career and family patterns.
7. We need to involve parents more systematically and develop mentally in the career development process of boys and girls.
Since parents still have the greatest impact on their children's self-concepts, goals, attitudes, and aspirations, it is exceedingly important they be oriented to the facts about the life span of women, changes in the labor force, the need for career planning for girls, and the trends in work and family. Orientation and information groups for parents regarding the development of women's potentials might be one vehicle; perhaps what we need is a career development counterpart to parent effectiveness training called CDTP, Career Development Training for Parents.
These are just a few strategies we might use as counselors to become facilitators not only of female career development but of the development of all human beings for a variety of life roles.
