Tiedeman's decision making paradigm also is as applicable to decisions of girls as to decisions of boys. Tiedeman describes how an individual sets goals relevant to the environment in which those goals may be achieved, how one absorbs information from the environments in which he places himself, and how he ultimately influences those environments and maintains himself in those environments. The data that girls must process in making decisions undoubtedly differs from boys' data, but the process is the same.
Hershenson, in organizing vocational development theories around the concept of energy expenditure, proposes five developmental stages. The stage-relevant vocational questions indicating how energy is spent are: Am I? Who am I? What can I do? What will I do? What meaning does what I do have for me? This sequence of questions is useful in counseling girls with respect to both the sex role and the competitive achievement role they wish to develop. Hershenson states that a common fault in vocational counseling comes from asking questions about will and value (those late in the sequence) before identity questions have been asked and processed.
Other theorists, notably Super, Roe, and Holland, have contributed concepts useful in thinking about girls' vocations, even though their study groups have been predominantly male. Super's major contribution relates career choice to the expression of self-concept. For women, it would seem that self-concept is the pervasive variable that determines not only what career, but also whether a career. Roe's work ties the satisfaction of childhood needs within the family context to ultimate vocational motivation. Holland proposes a career typology system, organizing careers according to the personality attributes required for success and satisfaction.
The vocational development theorists have contributed germinal ideas that are useful in vocational counseling with women. More research with these ideas using female study groups is needed, but in the interim, some counselor perspective for counseling girls emerges from an understanding of available literature.
Beginnings for More Effective Counseling for Girls
Counselors who can use the knowledge that exists about the psychology of women and vocational development can go a long way in developing vocational interests in. the adolescent girl. It is appropriate for counselors who have this depth of understanding to take the lead in establishing activities and practices that contribute to realistic career planning by girls.
A kindergarten-to-college program for vocational development could lead to greater fulfillment for women by encouraging planning.
Counselors and teachers should begin in the early grades of school to predispose girls to thinking in career terms. By attitude and action it should be made clear to young girls that it is acceptable for them to plan to work, and that girls-as surely as boys-can be respected for their work contributions. Women who have resolved the marriage and career conflict in all varieties of ways should be invited to participate in elementary school programs, either as staff or as guests. While there may be some usefulness to field trips where girls see women working, it is more important that girls have an opportunity to learn the meaning of work to those women. Women coming into the schools for that purpose can make an impact.
Westervelt has also pointed to the elementary school's capacity for extinguishing "pro-social aggression" in young girls. She defines pro-social aggression as an initiative in organizing people to get things done. The little girl organizer in our schools often finds herself rejected by peer and teacher alike as "bossy" and unfeminine. Thus, by the end of elementary school, boys, who initially exhibit less pro-social aggression than girls, have taken the lead.
It is perhaps useful to help boys develop pro-social aggression, but it is doubtful that in the process girls must learn to give it up. The counselor, in his role as a human development specialist, can help set a tone more favorable to developing girls' potential through consultation with staff and through in-service training programs.
As girls begin to mature, group guidance activities focused directly on the psychology of women should be initiated in junior high school. These groups might follow the now common sessions explaining physiological maturation. With a background of exposure to achieving and nurturing women during the elementary years, pubescent girls would be interested in a fairly cognitive picture of how women may resolve role conflict related to sex identity and career identity. Material similar to that presented here as two identity issues could serve as a starting point. This kind of activity would expand a girl's awareness of the options open to her well beyond her family experience and would emphasize the fact that she has a choice about what she will do. Timing this activity to precede the dating years would reduce the danger of planning activity becoming lost in marriage fantasy. Parent and teacher groups focused on the same content would also be useful.
At the high school level, counselors must be prepared to deal with the conflict that is now personal and real. Counselors cannot afford the insulation of saying, by word or action, "I'm interested in your career, but your dating behavior and sex life are your own private business." For women, vocation and sexuality are so closely bound together that to treat one without the other in counseling can only lead to irrelevance. Individual and small group counseling would be the appropriate forum. Opportunity should exist for counseling with couples and heterosexual groups. Provision should also be made for work with parents as needed and desired by students.
Better counselor education and more realistic counselor load would resolve most of the remaining problems in counseling for girls. Counselors must avoid giving outdated and irrelevant information. If counselors have the training and time to enter meaningful counseling collaboration with their clients, outdated advice will subside in favor of informed leadership and understanding.
The outcome of such a program should be greater fulfillment of women, through the vehicle of effective and honest recognition during the developmental years of the intra-psychic conflict associated with sex-role and career-role attainment.
