Chapter 4
Empowering Women’s Life Choices: An Examination of Gender and Sexual Orientation

Worldwide, throughout history, one of the most salient predictors of virtually all aspects of one’s work and career development is one’s gender. In essence, being born male or female is a powerful predictor of a host of life factors including: whether one works inside or outside the home (or both), the type of jobs one perceives as appropriate, the type of jobs one will be hired to perform, how far one is likely to climb, the level and type of harassment one experiences, the amount of money one will receive, the amount of conflict or enrichment one gets from work and family life, the amount of job satisfaction one reports, and ultimately the quality of one’s life.

—Heppner, 2013, p. 187

Empowering girls and women to make authentic life choices in ways that provide both economic security and personal meaning is a critical role for career counselors. As we examine intersecting social identities and their impact on career development, gender remains a highly salient aspect influencing women’s career choice and adjustment around the world (Hackett & Kohlhart, 2012; Watt & Eccles, 2008).

Although the second wave of feminism brought about important changes in social policy and legislation, there remain a host of gender-related issues influencing the life paths of girls and women (Heppner, 2013; Heppner & Jung, 2013; Ormerod, Joseph, Weitzman, & Winterrowd, 2012; Walsh & Heppner, 2006). For example, a recent United Nations report concluded that (a) women have not achieved equity with men in any country; (b) of the world’s 1.3 billion poor, nearly 70% are women; (c) between 75% and 80% of the world’s 27 million refugees are women and children; (d) out of the world’s 1 billion illiterate adults, two thirds are women; (e) the majority of women earn an average of three fourths of the pay of men doing the same work in both developing and developed countries; and (f) women are chronically underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers in developed countries around the world (Hausmann, Tyson, & Zahidi, 2010).

Thus, understanding the gendered context is important to being an effective career counselor. In addition, a woman’s sexual orientation can have profound impact on her career development; thus, we also discuss the impact of this important aspect of women’s lives on their career development.

To practice in a gender-blind (or sexual orientation–blind) manner as a career counselor can continue to perpetuate stereotypes and further reinforce the status quo. In our view, the profession of career counseling is meant to be quite the opposite. Career counselors should be dream restorers and social activists, they should empower people to resist the status quo if that brings with it discrimination and oppression, and they should be powerful social justice advocates. As a field, counselors have stressed their vision of social justice (Arredondo & Perez, 2003; Ratts, Toporek, & Lewis, 2010), and there is no clearer way for women to achieve social justice than through finding meaningful employment that allows them to have “full and equal participation in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure” (Bell, 1997, p. 3).

We start this chapter by highlighting key aspects of the gendered context and their gender-specific outcomes. Whole texts (e.g., Walsh & Heppner, 2006) have been written on the topic of women’s career development and should be consulted for a more in-depth analysis of these issues. Key issues are discussed here in order to highlight aspects of the gendered context and those specific to lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals that may impact our clients most directly. The second part of this chapter suggests specific assessments, techniques, and information to share with clients to make career counseling more empowering for lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual women. This part also discusses the impact of gender and sexual orientation on the different phases of career counseling outlined in Chapter 1.

As we begin this chapter, it is important to note that although we have attempted to integrate career research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals wherever possible, this body of literature, although growing in the last decade, remains quite small and incomplete. Whereas the literature on lesbian women and gay men is small, but growing, the literature on the career development of bisexual and transgender individuals is virtually nonexistent. Thus, we caution the reader that our ability to discuss and offer assistance in working with LGBT clients is limited because of the limited research base. We do, however, believe that it is important for LGBT issues to be addressed in the mainstream career literature, and thus we have tried to include references to this scholarship whenever possible. Two editions of the landmark book Handbook of Counseling and Psychotherapy With Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Clients are now available, offering much valuable information about LGBT issues, including career and vocational issues (Bieschke, Perez, & DeBord, 2006; Perez, DeBord, & Bieschke, 1999; Prince, 2013; Szymanski & Hilton, 2012).

In the next sections we briefly review the literature on critical gender and sexual orientation influences, presenting them in a thematic and developmental progression. They are not, however, exclusive categories, nor are they linear. Men and women, for example, continue to experience the impact of sex role socialization from birth to death. The thematic schema is meant to provide an organizing framework for typical developmental influences and includes sections on the gendered overlay of sex role socialization in childhood, the gendered context of adolescence, and the gendered workplace context.

The Gendered Overlay: Sex Role Socialization in Childhood

The overlay for all of the critical aspects of the gendered context that follow is the pervasive sex role socialization of boys and girls. How we interact with and are reinforced by others from a very young age dramatically alters how we view ourselves and our options. Our acquisition of gender-typed personality traits, interests, and behaviors starts early in life (Matlin, 2012) and is reinforced by parents, teachers, peers, the media, and the church, among others. Occupational stereotyping starts early. Matlin (2012) reported that children between kindergarten and fourth grade become increasingly rigid about which occupations they perceive that men and women can hold. These findings support Gottfredson’s (1981, 2005) theory of circumscription and compromise, in which she theorized that children’s perceptions of appropriate occupations become circumscribed into a narrow range of acceptable sex-typed career options. This range is generally set by the time the child is 6 to 8 years old and is difficult to modify once set. As Mac Naughton (2007) indicated, “Many studies have highlighted how preschool children can talk in detail about gender marking what clothes you wear. The colors you like, your hairstyle, your voice, your play choices, your likes, your dislikes and your relationships with each other” (p. 263). However, it is important to also remember that gender identity develops alongside other social identities and is made even more complex by its intersection with race, class, and sexual orientation (Mac Naughton, 2007).

The role of sexual orientation identity in the vocational development of lesbian and bisexual women has been the focus of some research. Croteau, Anderson, Distefano, and Kampa-Kokesch (1999) discussed two areas of research that have prompted the most scientific inquiry: (a) Gender role socialization influences the development of vocational interest in gay and lesbian individuals in a distinct manner from this development in heterosexual individuals, and (b) gay and lesbian individuals internalize societal vocational stereotypes and use them to define their structures of opportunity.

Croteau et al. (1999) indicated that gay and lesbian individuals tend to be more gender nontraditional in their career interests than do their heterosexual counterparts. This nontraditionality has two potential outcomes. If gay and lesbian children are discouraged from pursuing nontraditional paths, this may lead to increased indecision, restricted choices, and less career satisfaction. There is some evidence, however, to suggest that lesbian women may be more likely to pursue nontraditional careers and that there may be more support for nontraditional career choice within the lesbian community (Fassinger, 1995, 1996).

In addition, writers have indicated that LGBT individuals may internalize stereotypes about appropriate career fields and limit their choices to ones they believe are appropriate. For example, several studies have provided evidence that LGBT individuals restrict their opportunities for working with children (Croteau et al., 1999). Thus, it appears that for heterosexual, lesbian, or bisexual women, early societal messages about what is gender appropriate may have powerful influences on their eventual career choices. This emphasizes the need for school counselors to play an active role in helping to change these messages before they become firmly implanted in the ways that boys and girls view the world of work.

The Gendered Context of Adolescence

As children enter into adolescence, that critical transition period between childhood and adulthood, a number of important influences shape their views of themselves in relation to the occupational world. This time period is especially critical in the development of a sense of self-identity. Several researchers have looked to the school environment as a major socializing and self-concept-forming influence.

A number of important studies have examined the differential treatment of boys and girls at all levels of the educational experience. In studies that examined gender bias in the classroom, researchers observed bias from the grade school level (Sadker & Sadker, 1994) through the college level (Fischer & Good, 1994; Ossana, Helms, & Leonard, 1992). Although some of the gender bias is blatant, such as professors telling sexist jokes, much of it is more subtle, such as the systematic ignoring of girls’ and women’s comments by professors, which leads the girls and women to feel devalued or invisible in the academic community. Freeman (1979) labeled this phenomenon the null environment. A null environment is one that neither actively discourages nor encourages, but rather ignores, the individual. In Freeman’s study of college students, she found that both women and men felt ignored by educational institutions, but men felt more supported by friends and family. This process of ignoring women, which is so characteristic of the null environment, has been referred to as a form of passive discrimination (Betz, 1989). Although there has been growing awareness in this area, recent research has still indicated that in the United States, male and female teachers continue to provide greater attention to their male students’ academic work (Good & Brophy, 2003). “Teachers select boys more for special learning opportunities, leadership roles, and academic awards, especially in mathematics and science” (Grant & Kimberly, 2007, p. 573).

Although much early research indicated that there appeared to be some gender bias on the part of school counselors who were poorly informed about women’s employment and who reinforced stereotypical options (Betz, 2006), few studies have been conducted since that time to examine current attitudes and practices. Although most counselors are probably now aware of the need not to sex role stereotype occupational choices, it is unclear how more subtle messages are conveyed in the counseling context. Without behavioral research analogous to that conducted in classrooms by Sadker and Sadker (1994), it is difficult to determine what is actually being reinforced by school counselors. The few studies conducted that have examined the role of gender bias in career and lifestyle planning have unfortunately found gender-biased attitudes and practices (Robertson & Fitzgerald, 1990).

Homophobia refers to “systematic discrimination against gays and lesbians. . . . The term points to a sense of panic, suggesting an association with psychic or unconscious motives” (Ghaill, Haywood, & Popoviciu, 2007, p. 549). Research has also indicated that homophobic beliefs and attitudes are prevalent in all aspects of society (e.g., the media, curricula, peer group interactions; Ghaill et al., 2007; Mandel & Vitelli, 2007), and, thus, it is very likely that mental health professionals have acquired many of these attitudes at a conscious or unconscious level. Career counselors must be aware of their own homophobia and not encourage or discourage lesbian clients into certain careers based on stereotypical beliefs.

Although adolescence is for some a time of identity development around tentative career choices, if the adolescent is also involved in the process of sexual identity development, his or her vocational identity can be delayed. In one study, lesbian women reported feeling behind their heterosexual counterparts because of the time and emotional energy they had devoted to their sexual identity development and the coming-out process. For more information about LGBT adolescents, see Hershberger and D’Augelli (1999).

Kerr and her colleagues’ (Kerr, Vuyk, & Rea, 2012) extensive research on academically gifted girls and women emphasized that even for this highly talented portion of the population, a lack of guidance and support can have drastic consequences. The authors indicated that what happens to these young women can hardly be called career development; rather, they described it as “a gently downward spiral as gifted young women adjust their interests, aspirations, and achievements to fit their own perceived limitations” (Kerr & Maresh, 1994, p. 207). Moreover, Kerr and her colleagues’ research also indicates that although gifted girls and boys are more alike than different in their intelligence, creative abilities, and psychological adjustment, gendered practices in schools and other venues result in the eventual differences we see between males and females in their interests, achievements, and well-being (Kerr et al., 2012).

Thus, the gendered context of childhood and adolescence has a critical influence on the career aspirations of young men and women. As social cognitive learning theory and research makes clear, the earlier these messages are encoded in the schema of the individual, the more difficult they are to alter. Research indicates that when the individual leaves the educational institution and pursues employment, gender and sexual orientation biases continue to be reinforced. For lesbian and bisexual women and transgender individuals, these biases are compounded, as the intersection of multiple minority statuses increases the likelihood that these women will face discrimination based not only on gender but also on sexual orientation, in the forms of homophobia and heterosexism (Prince, 2013).

The Gendered Workplace Context

These gender-based roles for women may form the basis for the continued discrimination in hiring (Betz, 2006), in salaries (Watt & Eccles, 2008), and in sexual harassment on the job (Ormerod et al., 2012; Paludi, 2007) so consistent in the literature. Even if women do exceedingly well, there appears to be what some have referred to as a glass ceiling (Russell, 2006), such that women can rise only so far on the corporate ladder but not reach top-level executive positions. It appears that although there is increased awareness in organizations about the existence of sexual harassment, hostile environments that devalue women still exist, and informal networks that exclude women from top positions still predominate.

There is also convincing evidence that lesbian women experience significantly more employment discrimination than heterosexual women (Bieschke & Toepfer-Hendey, 2006; Ormerod et al., 2012). This is because, in addition to the bias they may receive due to their sex, they also must face the harassment and discrimination that come from our heterosexist, homophobic society. Although it might have become somewhat less socially acceptable to be blatantly discriminatory against some minority groups, research indicates it is still acceptable to express hostility toward lesbians and gay men. Lesbians continue to report fear of losing their jobs should they decide to be open about their sexual orientation. Studies indicate that these fears are not unfounded and that lesbians do face considerable levels of employment discrimination based on their sexual orientation.

Croteau et al. (1999) reported that employment discrimination against LGBT individuals is widespread, with between 25% and 66% of individuals studied reporting discrimination. This is often formal and involves discrimination in hiring, promotion, raises, and limited benefits for partners, but it may also be informal and include a hostile work environment and verbal harassment (Croteau, 1996).

Workplace sexual identity management has been identified in several reviews as being a “core issue in understanding the unique vocational experiences of LGB people” (Lidderdale, Croteau, Anderson, Tovar-Murray, & Davis, 2006, p. 245). The level of concealment of one’s sexual orientation has been shown to relate to level of discrimination (Croteau & Lark, 1995). Griffin (1992) identified four categories of vocational identity management: (a) “passing,” whereby the individual leads others to believe that he or she is heterosexual; (b) “covering,” in which the individual tries to hide his or her orientation at work while not pretending to be heterosexual; (c) “implicitly out,” whereby one is honest about one’s life but does not actually describe oneself as lesbian or bisexual; and (d) “explicitly out,” which involves openly labeling oneself as lesbian or bisexual at work. Griffin hypothesized that the choice of strategy involves a tension between fear of discovery and need for self-integrity (Croteau et al., 1999). Scholars indicate that the strength of this model is its ability to describe the range of strategies for concealment or openness that exist to individuals. However, the model has been criticized for being limited in that “key theoretical questions about how the strategies are learned and how they change over time remain unanswered. The influence of individual and contextual variables is not explained” (Lidderdale et al., 2006, p. 249). Lidderdale and colleagues (2006) developed a workplace sexual identity management model by using the theoretical framework of the social cognitive career choice model (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). The model presents four segments that nicely depict the multidimensional and conceptual nature of this construct. The four segments are (a) developing learning experiences about sexual identity management, (b) developing personally acceptable identity management strategies, (c) choosing and implementing sexual identity management strategies, and (d) learning from outcomes. Career counselors can use this model with clients to help them understand both contextual variables and the myriad of influences involved in sexual identity management, as well as develop sexual identity management self-efficacy beliefs (Lidderdale et al., 2006).

Gender-Specific Outcomes

The previous sections were an overview of some of the career-related aspects of the gendered environment that appear during early development, during adolescence, and in the workplace. Learning more about aspects of this environment is an important step in improving career counseling for lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women. Only when we as counselors have adequate information about the extent of the gendered context and issues relevant to sexual orientation can we be effective in our interventions with clients. This section discusses some of the most prevalent gender-specific outcomes that may result from these environments and that may dramatically influence career counseling. Specifically, these outcomes are limited participation in mathematics-related fields, lower expectations for success, lower self-efficacy beliefs about nontraditional careers, relational focus, and role conflict.

Limited Participation in Math Fields

On the topic of mathematics and girls, there is both good and bad news to report. First the good news: Math performance for girls and women has steadily increased over the past 2 decades, leading Boaler and Irving (2007) to assert, “As we survey the landscape of gender and mathematics relationships in various countries around the world . . . in many countries differences in boys’ and girls’ mathematics achievement that used to prevail have been eradicated” (p. 287). Various reasons have been posited for this good news—most often that mathematics classrooms have found ways to make math more girl-friendly. The bad news, however, is that in some countries, including the United States, greater math achievement has not led to greater participation in math-related occupations. Occupations that have a strong math or science base are referred to as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) occupations. STEM fields are expanding rapidly in the U.S. economy, with a 2002 National Science Foundation study indicating they will grow at a rate 3 times as fast as that of occupations in general. Yet even though the number of women obtaining doctorates in STEM-related fields has increased fivefold in the past quarter century, women represent less than one fourth of the STEM labor market (Fassinger & Asay, 2006).

Given the high number of present and future occupations requiring mathematics skills, math has been labeled the “critical filter” for women’s career development (Betz, 1994; 2006, p. 51). For women to have the option to participate in the full range of occupations, it is critical that interventions help women make the step into STEM-related fields. As Fassinger and Asay (2006) pointed out,

Much of this work will require systemic changes that include: developing educational and workplace policies that affirm and support all workers (e.g., equitably distributed benefits, antidiscrimination statements); instituting educational and workplace practices that help to counter discriminatory attitudes (e.g., training in diversity, transparent performance review and reward systems); implementing social policies and laws that support families in all diverse forms (e.g., accessible child care, medical and legal benefits available to all families); and, finally, transforming gender socialization practices so that all individuals have the freedom and support to actualize their best selves. (pp. 450–451)

It is important for career counselors to understand the underlying mechanisms and beliefs that help to keep this gender disparity in place. Correll (2010) investigated how boys and girls differ on their beliefs related to their math ability and found that boys assessed their math ability as being stronger even when test scores between boys and girls were exactly the same. Since belief in one’s competence is an important predictor of persistence toward a mathematics career, these beliefs are highly salient. Correll concluded, “Boys do not pursue mathematical activities at a higher rate than girls do because they are better in mathematics. They do so, at least partially, because they think they are better” (p. 1724). Helping young women believe in their competence would seem like an important step in altering these STEM disparities (Heppner, 2013).

Lower Expectations for Success

Another pervasive outcome of the gendered context seems to be a consistent underestimation of abilities on the part of girls and women. Beginning at a very young age, girls perceive and report their career options to be much narrower than do boys. In a study reported by Unger and Crawford (1992), first- and second-grade children were asked the traditional question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A total of 33 boys and 33 girls responded. The boys came up with 18 different occupational options, the girls only 8. Girls are significantly more likely to report that they are not smart enough or good enough to attain their desired careers (O’Brien, Friedman, Tipton, & Linn, 2000).

Studies report that college women also consistently indicate lower expectancies for success on exams and other measures of achievement in college (Matlin, 2012). This phenomenon seems to continue throughout a woman’s development, with adult women also reporting lower expectations for what they can achieve in their lives. These underestimations were present even when the women’s objective performance was found to be better than men’s (Matlin, 2012).

Betz (2006) reported that lower expectations for success occur primarily for masculine-stereotyped tasks. Specifically, lower expectations are found for tasks that have as components social comparison, competition, and social evaluation and that lack clear performance feedback. As Betz argued, these are the very characteristics generally necessary for career success. Consequently, if women consistently underestimate their ability to perform in these situations, it is probably harmful to their overall career development.

A longitudinal study by O’Brien and her colleagues (2000) found that over the 5 years of the study, women chose less prestigious careers and more traditional careers than those to which they had aspired as high school seniors. In addition, these women chose careers that underutilized their abilities (O’Brien et al., 2000). Lesbian and bisexual woman may also express more limited expectations for success because of the perception that they will be entering more prejudicial and discriminatory work environments. This perception may limit the range of careers they pursue (Croteau et al., 1999).

Research has also indicated that women’s underestimation of their ability is present in ability and interest inventories (Swanson & Lease, 1990). Swanson and Lease’s (1990) research supported an earlier finding of Bailey and Bailey (1971), who reported that male college students rated themselves above a “typical male student” and women rated themselves below a “typical female student.” Swanson and Lease urged career counselors to supplement self-ratings and to explore the authenticity of ratings whenever possible.

Lower Self-Efficacy Beliefs About Nontraditional Careers

Gender differences continue to persist in occupational pursuits, with women being less represented in sex-nontraditional fields (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). Research has also indicated that, in addition to not choosing these fields initially, women tend to drop out of nontraditional fields at a higher rate than do men (Jacobs, Chhin, & Bleeker, 2006; Watt, 2006).

One potential reason for this lack of involvement in generally high-paying, high-prestige nontraditional careers is lower self-efficacy beliefs. Self-efficacy refers to one’s confidence in one’s ability to do the tasks necessary in a particular field. If a woman does not feel confident in her ability in a nontraditional field, she is less likely to pursue the field, and, once in the field, is less likely to stay if met with obstacles or barriers. Self-efficacy or confidence in nontraditional occupations is also related to the amount of intrinsic value placed on the occupation (Betz & Hackett, 1983; Larose, Ratelle, Guay, Senecal, & Harvey, 2006).

Family–Work Conflict or Mutual Enhancement

As more and more heterosexual women have left the home to enter the paid labor force, one would expect changes in role expectations to have occurred in the home. Data indicate, however, that heterosexual women who work full time outside the home continue to be responsible for 80% to 90% of the work within the home as well. This appears to be true across ethnic and cultural groups also. Research indicates that working two full-time jobs is placing great strain on female workers. In an examination of the role conflict of home and work responsibilities, lesbian couples were much more committed to an equitable division of home-related tasks than were their heterosexual counterparts. Addressing these unique role conflicts may include dealing with partner differences in sexual orientation, identity management at work, and the issues of benefits being denied to partners (Croteau et al., 1999).

Among heterosexual couples, however, the pattern is quite clear. Betz and Fitzgerald (1987) conducted an extensive review of the literature on the relationship of marital status to career involvement. In Betz’s (1994) synopsis of this aspect of their review, she concluded that there is a “strong inverse relationship between being married and number of children and every measurable criterion of career involvement and achievement” (p. 21). Betz and Fitzgerald indicated that based on their review, they believe that role conflict is “the most salient factor in women’s career development” (p. 203). Although these studies were done some time ago, recent studies support the same conclusions. Frome, Alfeld, Eccles, and Barber (2008) conducted a longitudinal study of low- to middle-income women and found that their desire for flexibility indeed was a factor in their career choice. The fact that young women still see themselves as needing to take more flexible or family-friendly jobs in order to be able to both work and manage home and family responsibilities appears to remain strong.

Assessments and Techniques for Empowering Women’s Choices

The previous section examined several key aspects of the gendered context and their resultant gender-specific outcomes. Now we turn to examining various assessments and techniques for promoting women’s awareness and understanding of how gender and sexual orientation have influenced their career development. We first describe assessment techniques for both counselor and client that will help the counselor understand the impact of gender and sexual orientation on the change process in counseling. Then we discuss the importance of helping clients acquire information with which to make more authentic life choices.

Assessing Your Own Counseling Philosophy

As we ask you to assess your philosophy of counseling, it is important for us to clarify our own. Much of what we suggest in actual career counseling strategies flows from this underlying philosophy. A wide diversity of philosophies guides career counseling, and counselors who hold these philosophies can be placed on a continuum. At one end of the continuum are career counselors who view their role as one of matching individuals and occupational roles. These counselors would see their role as largely a technical one: assessing the skills, interests, and abilities of the client and matching that individual to an occupation that would best use those personal characteristics. These counselors would find assessment skills and knowledge of labor market information of most value to them. At the other end of the continuum, and more congruent with our philosophy, are career counselors who view their role as being personal and societal change agents. These counselors use knowledge of assessment and occupational information, along with psychological knowledge and constructs, to understand how the environmental context may be limiting the range of options their clients are currently considering. Thus, the counselors examine and challenge underlying assumptions clients have about themselves and the world of work.

As this philosophy applies directly to the gender context of career planning, we believe it is important to focus on gender and sexual orientation as categories of analysis within the career counseling context. We view the role of the career counselor as one of helping clients to understand and work through the numerous societal obstacles that systematically keep women and men from envisioning and achieving economic security and balancing meaningful achievement and relational connectedness in their lives. We recognize that gender socialization brings with it a host of problems for women (e.g., lower expectations for success, low math participation, occupational stratification and segregation, and family and career conflict) that severely restrict women’s aspirations and options. Similarly, as we explore in greater depth in Chapter 5, men’s socialization brings with it performance anxiety, restricted emotional expression, limited interpersonal relationships, and shortened life expectancy. Therefore, we view the role of the career counselor as one that challenges gender-based homophobic and heterosexist assumptions and helps clients recapture dreams and restore options that have been discarded along the way.

This philosophy also incorporates affirmative counseling practices. It recognizes homophobia and heterosexism as critical barriers in the lives of lesbians and bisexual women and seeks ways to affirm and enhance the lives of LGBT individuals through career counseling.

This philosophy challenges the counselor to go far beyond the maintenance of the status quo typified by the matching of people and jobs. It calls on each of us to ensure that our clients have the information to make authentic life decisions. In doing so, some of our suggestions will run counter to the popular notion in career counseling that we must respect the client’s own decision-making and career choices. Given the weight of gender socialization and the power of homophobia and heterosexism, we believe that many times women and men have not experienced the kind of environmental support and information necessary to lead them to authentic career decisions. This philosophy also emphasizes our role as change agents working for more humane and person-enhancing school and work environments. It views both our individual work with clients and our work in promoting change in the environment as being equally valid.

We urge you to clarify your own philosophy toward career counseling and to consider especially the role of multiple identities and how they impact a person’s career path. We highlight here one approach, the critical feminist approach to career counseling with women, as it incorporates many of the important issues that we address in this and other chapters. We also present the construct of LGBT affirmativeness. We hope that both of these models will serve as a starting point for your own thinking about critical elements of your philosophy in working with women in career counseling.

A Critical Feminist Approach to Career Counseling With Women (Chronister, McWhirter, & Forrest, 2006; McWhirter, 1994)

This model or approach to career counseling with diverse women is based on McWhirter’s (1994) empowerment model. More recently, Chronister and her colleagues (2006) described the model in depth and applied it to cases. Readers interested in a more in-depth description of this approach are encouraged to investigate this source. We want to highlight this specific model of career counseling with women as we feel it complements and enhances many of the aspects of this book and our own model of the career counseling process. This model seems particularly important, as it embraces the concept of empowerment and, hence, has particular utility in working with diverse women—especially women of color, immigrant women, lesbian women, women living in poverty, and disabled women. Thus, it is in keeping with the social justice goals that we believe are so critical to the work we do as career counselors.

First of all, it is important to understand what is meant by empowerment in this particular model:

The process by which people, organizations or groups who are powerless or marginalized (a) become aware of the power dynamics at work in their life contexts, (b) develop the skills and capacity for gaining some reasonable control over their lives, (c) which they exercise, (d) without infringing on the rights of others, and (e) which coincides with actively supporting the empowerment of others in their community. (Chronister et al., 2006, p. 170; see also McWhirter, 1994)

This approach has five constructs, the five Cs, to depict its central tenets. We believe these five are of critical importance to the career counseling process and complement and enhance many aspects of the career counseling process model we present in this text. Thus, we describe these components and highlight parallels within our own model and thinking.

Collaboration. This C speaks to the active roles necessary for both client and counselor in the career counseling process. This construct fits so well with our placement of the working alliance at the center of our model. Collaboration emphasizes that counselor and client work together to establish the goals of counseling, the tasks that will help to achieve those goals, and the importance of the relationship or bond between the counselor and client. In so doing, collaboration forms the very core of the process in our model.

Competence. This C speaks to the importance of recognizing and using the client’s skills and helping him or her to develop new skills as well. It fits so well with our notions of building on strengths and specifically with using instruments such as the Clifton StrengthsFinder (see Chapter 14) to help clients identify and use their strengths. The tenet of competence seems rooted in the idea that every client comes with strengths and that we should start from there rather than looking for pathology and weakness—we assess and reinforce strengths.

Context. The third critical C is context. We believe context to be crucial in understanding an individual woman’s career development. The ecological model (Cook, Heppner, & O’Brien, 2005) presented in Chapter 2 emphasizes most strongly the systems and subsystems that make up an individual’s ecology. We believe any vocational behavior to be an act in context and, as such, intertwined with one’s macro-, exo-, meso-, and microsystems. As the scope of whom we serve in career counseling becomes increasingly broad (immigrant women, women in poverty, etc.), it is critical that the context of each woman’s life be central to understanding and assisting with her own personal empowerment.

Critical Consciousness. McWhirter (1994) drew on the integrated work of both Paulo Freire (1970) and Ignacio Martin-Baro (1994) in discussing the construct of critical consciousness, which she defined as involving the dual processes of power analysis (or identifying how power is manifested and expressed in a woman’s life context) and critical self-reflection that generates awareness of how women can transform those dynamics. To be able to help clients do this kind of thinking, McWhirter emphasized the importance of counselors developing their own critical consciousness. She suggested that this be done through studying multicultural literature, having cross-cultural experiences, talking with people from different communities, and engaging in intense self-reflection.

This is the type of thinking and learning we urge counselors to do throughout this book. It is probably the most basic piece of advice we can give—that counselors must know themselves, their own prejudices and biases, the way they hold and use power, and the way they are controlled by others. They must know the ways in which racism, sexism, heterosexism, and all the other “-isms” affect them as counselors. All of this deep and many times hard learning and reflection is critical to really being able to empower others to look at the impact of these forces in their own lives.

Community. The final C is community, which entails both helping women find community to support them on their life journey and helping women find places where they can empower themselves by empowering others in their community. Early work with rape survivors and battered women illustrates the power that helping others can have in empowering oneself.

We believe McWhirter’s (1994) critical feminist approach to career counseling with women is useful in operationalizing the essential elements of empowerment and thus making it more usable and achievable with the women we seek to help.

LGBT Affirmativeness (Worthington, Savoy, & Vernaglia, 2001)

LGBT affirmativeness among heterosexuals is conceptualized as “the range of attitudes beliefs, emotions and behaviors that express and assert the positive valuing of the sexual identity of, and an understanding of the realities faced by LGBT individuals within an oppressive society” (Worthington et al., 2001, p. 2). Affirmative individuals are not only knowledgeable about LGBT issues but also understanding of and comfortable with their own sexual identity and diverse sexual orientations. Having contact and involvement with LGBT individuals is an important component of the process of becoming an LGBT-affirmative career counselor. This contact is presumed to occur not only in one’s professional role but also in other contexts, including personal, social, and familial networks. The model describes five states: Passive Conformity, Revelation and Exploration, Tentative Commitment, Synthesis and Integration, and Active Commitment. Becoming LGBT affirmative is a developmental process of movement from an unexamined, unconscious heterosexist or homophobic construction of the world; through a phase of intellectualized understanding of what it means to be LGBT affirmative; and finally to a more fully integrated level of awareness and expression, in which knowledge achieved at earlier phases is incorporated into one’s personal, professional, and political spheres. LGBT-affirmative counselors use their self-awareness, knowledge, skills, and involvement with LGBT individuals to inform their practice with all clients, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual clients.

Helping Clients Acquire Information for Making Authentic Life Choices

In addition to continually working on your own philosophy of career counseling with women, it is also important to build a repertoire of useful tools and techniques, processes, and discussion points that you can draw on when working with women. This section contains two informal assessments: (a) the Environmental Assessment of the Gendered Context Growing Up and (b) the Environmental Assessment of the Gendered Context of Work. These assessments are followed by a discussion of ways to increase the authenticity of career decision making through knowledge that includes (a) informing clients about the rewards and costs of gender role traditionality; (b) teaching clients how to alter gender- and homophobia-based self-efficacy beliefs; (c) informing clients about the importance of continuing in math and science careers and considering nontraditional career fields; (d) reinforcing the importance of valuing the unique characteristics that women traditionally possess; (e) using specific awareness and skills to work with the unique issues of lesbian and bisexual women; and (f) educating yourself on the specific needs of groups of women, such as women living in poverty, disabled women, and others.

Environmental Assessment of the Gendered Context Growing Up

Although research indicates that sex role socialization is pervasive, there are numerous individual differences in both extent of exposure and impact. We recommend that an assessment be done to examine the level to which each client has been influenced by traditional sex role socialization. This assessment should include an examination of the various sources of active support and discouragement, as well as neutral treatment, that has influenced the client’s life journey and perceived choices. Although these assessments will vary depending on life circumstances, the following questions provide a starting point:

• Think back to your childhood. What messages did you receive about the career options you might pursue?
• Who most actively supported the development of your interests and skills? What form did that active support take?
• Can you think of any discouragement you received regarding a potential interest area? What form did the discouragement take?
• In grade school (high school, college), did you feel support, discouragement, or a neutral atmosphere for the development of your interests?
• Were you more actively encouraged to pursue sex role–appropriate interests than nontraditional interests?
• If you were to graph your own sense of personal self-efficacy throughout your life, how would that graph look?
• Can you think of occupational areas you once dreamed of that you discarded at some point in your life? What were they, and what do you remember about the reasons why you discarded them?

This assessment can be done as part of the career counseling session or provided as a homework assignment for the client to ponder and write about independently. You may also want to use some variation of these questions while conducting a career genogram (see Chapter 11). The client can then process these reflections in the following sessions.

Environmental Assessment of the Gendered Context of Work

Much of the literature on career development focuses on adjustment or adaptation to the work environment. Fitting into the work culture and sharing similar interests and skills as those currently employed in the field have both been seen as valued career skills. Although not questioning their overall importance, researchers have begun to point out the toxic quality of some work environments that promote neither the physical nor the psychological health of their workers (Carayon, 1993). In this chapter, we point to research on sexual harassment, the glass ceiling, lack of mentoring and support, and stereotypical definitions of working women as sex objects or iron maidens. Thus, fitting into these environments cannot be seen as an appropriate goal. Research indicates that these unhealthy environments may be especially detrimental to individuals who have previously been underrepresented and marginalized in particular work fields. Women and men who work in nontraditional fields may find themselves being asked to adapt to environments that may not value their uniqueness and in which they might suffer bias, discrimination, and harassment. Thus, it may be vitally important that career counselors help clients analyze the work environment. Is it an environment in which the goal of adaptation is a healthy choice? Or does the environment support a culture that is basically unhealthy for the individual worker? Again, although these assessments will vary greatly depending on the individual circumstances of the work environment, the following questions might be a starting point:

• In general, how does your work environment feel to you? Warm and friendly? Cold and hostile? What words would you use to describe your work atmosphere?
• What messages have you received in your work environment about what options you might pursue within the organization? Do these options seem limited due to your sex or your sexual orientation?
• What are the signs that your environment at work is healthy for the individuals who work there?
• Are your skills and interests being actively promoted and developed within the organization?
• Are the unique aspects that characterize you (which may not be characteristic of the environmental culture) valued in your work environment?
• Can you think of subtle or blatant experiences of harassment or discouragement experienced in your work environment that have diminished your sense of personhood?
• Have there been times when you felt singled out or ignored because of your sex or your sexual orientation?

Once an environmental assessment of this kind has been conducted, the counselor’s role involves helping the client determine whether fitting in, becoming a change agent, or getting out of the system is the most healthy and functional life choice. Thus, these assessments are ways of helping you gain information about the influences of the gendered context on the individual. Although they should be adapted to fit the individual circumstances of the situation, they are provided here to stimulate your thinking about ways of addressing gender and sexual orientation issues in career counseling sessions.

Inform Women About the Rewards and Costs of Occupational Gender Role Traditionality

Research on the importance of achievement through paid employment in the lives of men and women is important knowledge to share with clients. Data are compelling that show that women who do not have outlets for achievement outside the homemaker role are more likely to suffer from psychological distress (Betz, 2006) and lower self-esteem than their employed counterparts. Although respecting our clients’ ultimate choices is important, it is critical to examine the authenticity of those choices. Authentic choices can only be made through knowledge of both the costs and the rewards of those choices.

In addition to the psychological benefits of meaningful paid employment, women need to know about the likelihood that they will be economically independent during their lifetimes. More than two thirds of women in the United States are divorced, widowed, separated, single, or married to men whose income is below the poverty level (U.S. Department of Labor, 2007). Although most young women optimistically approach relationships with a vision of an economically stable future, they should be aware of the reality of many women’s lives.

Thus, women need more information about adherence to traditional gender role prescriptions and the occurrence of psychological distress as well as financial need. The career counselor is in a unique role to explore how much the client already knows about these costs and rewards and to furnish additional information as needed.

Teach Clients How to Alter Gender- and Homophobia-Based Self-Efficacy Beliefs

Self-efficacy has been defined as “people’s judgments in their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performance” (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). Self-efficacy has been shown to predict choice of behavioral activities, effort expended on these activities, persistence despite obstacles, and actual performance (Bandura, 1977). The development of self-efficacy beliefs has been demonstrated to be facilitated by the following conditions: (a) performance attainment, or trying a behavior and having success with it; (b) verbal persuasion, or being told by others that you can do it; (c) vicarious reinforcement, or seeing others similar to oneself successfully perform a behavior; and (d) physiological input, or bodily sensations that give you information about how you are doing (Bandura, 1977, 1982).

Although gender-based self-efficacy beliefs may be embedded in how clients view themselves, it is important that career counselors provide information about the changeable nature of these beliefs. If men and women know that these beliefs can be altered, and if they know the procedures needed for change, they are in a better position to decide whether to alter these beliefs. Hackett and Betz (1981) hypothesized that Bandura’s (1977, 1982) theoretical framework would have particular relevance to the area of women’s career development, sparking a plenitude of important research on the impact of self-efficacy beliefs on career-related behavior. In the first empirical test of the application of Bandura’s theory to women’s career development, Hackett and Betz demonstrated considerable support for its application. Additional research has demonstrated that self-efficacy is related to performance in a myriad of other domains, such as academics (Bores-Rangel, Church, Szendre, & Reeves, 1990; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991), math (Pajares & Miller, 1995), and work-related behavior (Sadri & Robertson, 1993). Lent et al. (1994) also expanded Bandura’s work by advancing a social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Using meta-analytic data, they suggested a direct relationship between self-efficacy and performance in academic and vocational areas. Social cognitive theory has also been applied to LGBT individuals (Morrow, Gore, & Campbell, 1996).

Career counselors can promote women’s self-efficacy through a variety of theoretically based strategies. Performance attainment as a source of self-efficacy can be facilitated through women being encouraged to try out a variety of experiences and roles similar to one they might be considering. Internships, part-time jobs, and volunteer experiences provide valuable ways for women to realize that they are capable of more than they had thought was in their realm of possibilities. Verbal persuasion may come from any significant person in a woman’s life, including her counselor. Letting the client know that you believe in her ability to accomplish her goals can be a powerful message. Vicarious reinforcement, another important source of self-efficacy beliefs, involves the client seeing other women who are similar to herself succeed in roles she is considering. Career counselors can help locate such role models and make arrangements for formal or informal contact. Thus, it is important that career counselors let women know that it is possible to alter their gender-based interest and behavior patterns. Giving clients specific information about how they can alter their beliefs in their abilities is an important step toward empowering them.

Inform Clients About the Importance of Pursuing Math and Science

Although the evidence reported earlier in this chapter about the occupational importance of continuing in math and science courses has been in the professional literature for a number of years, there is little evidence that parents and children are aware of these data. Career counselors can take an active role in helping girls and women understand the role of mathematics and science in their career development. The following are three specific techniques career counselors might use:

1. Girls should be presented with specific data, perhaps in graphic form, that depict the continually narrowing range of options available to those who lack math and science backgrounds.
2. Because girls and women are now taking more math courses than previously, it is important to reinforce with them the wide range of attractive occupations that use these skills.
3. The perception of how sociable people in the math and science fields are has also been the subject of investigation. For example, Lips (1992) found that study participants who believed that scientists are sociable were more likely to enjoy math and science courses and stated more interest in pursuing math- and science-related careers. These data highlight the importance of counselors exposing clients to role models who can help break preexisting stereotypes about mathematical and scientific occupations.

Valuing What Is Female: Integrating the Self-in-Relation Theory Into Career Counseling

One of the gender-related outcomes presented earlier in this chapter is that self-concept may be formed differently by men and women, with the relational component more critical to women’s identity formation than to men’s. This difference has a host of implications for both the process and the content of work with female clients:

1. Perhaps one of the most critical roles for the career counselor is helping female clients to value their uniqueness as women. From the earliest years, and across cultures, there is a valuing of masculine traits over feminine ones and of boys over girls (Basow, 1992). This phenomenon continues throughout life in varied environmental situations, often resulting in a devaluing of the self. Therefore, it is important that the counselor value the strong preferences women may have for connectedness and relationship and reinforce these characteristics as unique strengths rather than signs of immature dependency, as traditionally has been the case.
2. The counselor might help the client explore whether dissatisfaction in a work setting is a result of a lack of perceived connection with others. It may be especially important to help the client determine the advantages and disadvantages of various courses of action: Does she try to find a different work environment that better meets her relational needs, or does she try to change her need for connection from 9 to 5 and fit into the work environment? Does she try to change her work environment to make it a place that better fits her needs? Each of these courses of action requires additional assistance. For example, if the woman decides to change her work environment, the counselor can help her identify work environments that may promote a greater sense of relationship.
3. Although it seems critically important to overtly demonstrate that you value your client’s need for connection and her relational competence, especially given how devalued these characteristics are in society, it is still important that the client examine the benefits as well as the costs of both the separate and connected perspectives when making career decisions (Hotelling & Forrest, 1985). The predominance of women in social occupations (e.g., nursing or teaching) may enable women to meet needs for connection and relationship, but because of the devalued status of these occupations, they may not provide the income needed to sustain a household. The counselor can also help the client identify when her emphasis on connection may lead to role overload and conflict because of too many relational demands. Especially during the stressful time of a career transition, the counselor may also need to emphasize to the client the importance of caring for her own wants and needs.
4. During the career counseling process, a client’s relational perspective may mean that she would benefit from a greater connection with you as the counselor (Nelson, 1996), and she may wish for more self-disclosure from you about your own career and life planning decisions. This may be one way of building a strong working alliance with the client. Moreover, she may react negatively to, and find little benefit in, vocational exploration tools that she perceives as lacking human connection (e.g., computerized career information systems, batteries of vocational assessment instruments). One client recently characterized her career counseling experience as follows: “They just took my data, referred me to some boxes, and shuffled me out the door—no human connection. This is my life I want help with.”
5. Although “the mainstream of vocational theory includes the implicit assumption that a career is a vehicle or opportunity leading to realization of self” (Forrest & Mikolaitis, 1986, p. 86), a client may benefit from a close examination of how her career choices also affect others in her relational community. It may, therefore, be beneficial for you to examine the importance the client perceives her career planning decisions will have for others in her environment (partner, children, employer, etc.). This self versus relational focus forms the theoretical basis for one of the factors on the Career Transitions Inventory, which is discussed in depth in Chapter 13. One factor, called decision independence, includes such items as “Career choices affect others and I must take the needs of others into account when making a career transition.” The Career Transitions Inventory may be helpful in assessing a client’s relational focus as it relates to her career decision making.

These ways of altering our view of healthy identity development to include the relational component may influence career counseling from both a content and a process perspective. The relational component emphasizes the importance of the life career perspective (McDaniels & Gysbers, 1992) in career counseling, in which one’s vocation is only a part of the total life career.

In addition, this knowledge may be useful to clients to help them make the most well-informed decisions possible. Other information may be valuable given the client’s specific demographics or situation. The Walsh and Heppner (2006) text provides in-depth research on a variety of topics, such as counseling women in management, women in science and engineering, dual-career relationships, immigrant women, women in poverty, and so on. This type of current information is indispensable when one is helping clients sort through gender-related life issues.

In Chapter 1 we outline a process of career counseling that consists of two major phases and a number of subphases. In the next section of the current chapter we discuss ways of integrating the issues relevant to the gendered context into this broad career planning process. Although more generic issues related to this model are presented in Chapters 8 through 17, the next section highlights those aspects of each phase that may have gender-related implications for girls and women.

Competence in Working With Lesbian and Bisexual Women

Although most of the recommendations made for working with girls and women in general are salient for lesbian and bisexual women, a host of unique skills and areas of awareness also need our attention. The following five skills are critical for becoming an effective career counselor for LGBT clients:

1. Being familiar with the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling’s Competencies for Counseling LGBQQIA Individuals and Competencies for Counseling With Transgender Clients and the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Clients. These guidelines provide a wealth of helpful suggestions for all human service providers, including career counselors. They are available online at http://nebula.wsimg.com/84e8fe2e0d2b3df3c4494f57cf6746df?AccessKeyId=720287C8355A159AB9E1&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 and http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/guidelines.aspx, respectively.
2. Understanding sexual orientation identity development and its role in influencing career development. Excellent chapters have been written to aid in this understanding (see Broido, 1999; Fukuyama & Ferguson, 1999; Reynolds & Hanjorgiris, 1999). In addition, McCarn and Fassinger (1996) developed a model of lesbian development, and Fassinger and Miller (1996) developed a model of sexual minority identity formation.
3. Understanding and helping clients with issues of workplace discrimination and sexual identity management by using current models such as the workplace sexual identity management model (see Croteau et al., 1999; Lidderdale et al., 2006).
4. Understanding how societal messages about sexual orientation influence career interests, choices, and perceptions of the structure of opportunity for LGBT clients (Croteau et al., 1999).
5. Developing an awareness of one’s own homophobic or heterosexist prejudices and taking active steps to overcome them and develop LGBT-affirmative attitudes. The work by Worthington et al. (2001) represents important new contributions in the area of LGBT affirmativeness.

The Career Counseling Process: Placing Gender Issues Within the Existing Counseling Process

Client Goal or Problem Identification, Clarification, and Specification

Identification—Opening and Forming the Working Alliance

The opening phase of career counseling has as its central goals (a) identifying the client’s goals or problems and related internal thoughts and feelings, (b) forming a working alliance, and (c) defining and clarifying the client–counselor relationship and responsibilities. In planning this phase with the gendered context in mind, you as a counselor should keep in mind the following:

• You should help the client examine her goals through a gender and sexual orientation filter. Which goals are motivated out of socialization needs? Which presenting problems result from environmental pressures or a diminished sense of self? Are internal thoughts and feelings the result of socialized feelings of devaluation or lowered efficacy? Does the client appear to be setting authentic goals based on a full knowledge of relevant information? Are there references to discarded dreams?
• As you begin to develop the working alliance, you should be especially aware of the client’s level of feminist identity development and what impact that might have on the relationship you are building. If a client is in the embeddedness–emancipation phase, for example, it may be particularly important for her to work with a gender-aware female counselor. A gender-aware man may also be acceptable, depending upon her current level of anger and separatism. Building the working alliance means building a bond of collaboration and hope. The client needs to see you as someone who understands her situation and relates to her concerns. Self-disclosure of relevant and appropriate information from your own life may help to build the bond. As you begin building the working alliance, this is also a time to reinforce client strengths and to stress the importance of valuing unique, traditionally female characteristics.
• As you work with lesbian and bisexual clients, be aware of their sexual orientation identity development and how this may impact their career development. This knowledge is also important in helping you gauge what interventions may be helpful. For example, if the client is at a very early stage in her sexual identity development, she may not be ready to discuss how her sexual identity influences her career development. Additionally, awareness on your part is important in communicating LGBT-affirmative attitudes and behaviors. Consideration of heterosexist assumptions, use of language (partner vs. spouse), and behaviors are essential to establishing a safe, trusting working alliance.
• When clarifying the client–counselor relationship and each individual’s responsibilities, it is important to discuss your philosophy of counseling, particularly those aspects that relate to counseling women. If you prefer a feminist or gender-aware counseling relationship—a collaborative working relationship emphasizing equality—then this needs to be communicated. Because many clients come to counselors seeking an expert who will give them advice, this collaborative relationship may be foreign. The role of the environment in shaping the individual may also be an important philosophical issue to discuss. If you believe it is your responsibility to challenge gender-based and heterosexist assumptions, the client should know this. The client has a right to informed consent in the choice of a career counselor. The counselor’s philosophical base is an important consideration for a client when making that choice.

Clarification—Gathering Client Information

The clarification and information-gathering subphase of the career counseling process has as its central goal learning more about the client.

Here, any or all of the assessment measures discussed earlier in this chapter can be used to supplement other standardized or nonstandardized assessment measures you consider appropriate to use. Using the Environmental Assessment of the Gendered Context Growing Up or the Environmental Assessment of the Gendered Context of Work would be appropriate ways of gathering information about the client’s experiences that may have an impact on her career planning process.

If standardized tests are used, it will be important to discuss issues related to test bias and how women typically underestimate their ability on such measures.

Card sorts (see Chapter 12) are recommended as a way to understand more about how the client is processing her interests and skills related to each career field. Card sorts allow the counselor to challenge beliefs regarding the client’s abilities in nontraditional career fields.

Specification—Understanding and Hypothesizing About Client Information and Behavior

The specification subphase of the career counseling process has as its central goal understanding the client more fully and hypothesizing about her unique dynamics and the psychological and environmental forces at work.

This phase probes deeper to understand more about how the client makes meaning out of herself and her occupational world. As we look through the gender filter, we try to understand the life choices from both an individual and an environmental perspective. We try to assess the authenticity of the client’s earlier choices and those she has ahead of her.

In this phase, providing knowledge to the client to help her understand the impact of gender is appropriate. Depending on the situation, this may involve talking about the importance of continuing in the math and science fields, the ways in which self-efficacy beliefs about nontraditional fields can be altered, or what we know about the costs and benefits of traditional gender role beliefs.

This is an important phase in helping lesbian clients understand how various aspects of their sexual orientation may influence the career planning process. It is also important that the counselor understand the phenomenon of internalized homophobia and help the client recognize whether she has internalized heterosexist messages and beliefs. It is important for the counselor to recognize that sexual identity development represents an “emergent continuous life process” (Reynolds & Hanjorgiris, 1999, p. 36).

Techniques such as the genogram (see Chapter 11) may be used in this phase of counseling to understand better the client’s gender-influenced life choices from a family systems perspective. This may also be the time to have the client construct a lifeline to help her understand issues such as how her self-efficacy beliefs have changed over time or what role compromise has played in her life choices.

Client Goal or Problem Resolution

This second phase of the career counseling process is one of taking action. Here we move from gathering and evaluating aspects of the gendered environment and their resultant gender-specific outcomes to actually taking steps to act on this information. Getting to this phase means that you have worked through all the major aspects of the client’s situation and that she is in a position to make an authentic life decision based on as complete a set of information about herself and the work world as possible.

Taking Action

Whether the action is deciding to attend a vocational–technical school for auto body repair training, change from pre-med to a nursing program, join the Peace Corps to improve the lives of Third World women, or start one’s own business importing ethnic textiles and baskets, a variety of gender-related issues should be explored. A few examples of these are the following:

• The client should practice interviewing skills so that she will not devalue herself in the job interview and will be able to recognize sex bias and homophobia in the interview and early signs of an unhealthy work environment.
• The client should learn the importance of networking with other women to gain support and should find female role models who have dealt with similar situations.
• A strong, self-enhancing résumé must adequately represent her skills and background. Women tend to underestimate their abilities on résumés, and, to make matters worse, evidence also shows that résumés are given less favorable ratings by employers when only the names are changed from male to female. Thus, it is critical that women have the strongest possible written presentation of their credentials.

Developing Career Goals and Plans of Action

In this subphase, the client benefits from a variety of interventions that help her develop an individual career plan. This happens when all the individual pieces gained from the earlier phases of counseling are brought together and integrated into a unique plan. This plan helps to make the step from the nurturing environment of the counseling setting to the outside world a little less frightening. When a plan is made and small, manageable steps are identified, the client can begin to feel a sense of confidence in her ability to make changes in her life. In addition to identifying the steps that the client will take, it is also important to identify potential stumbling blocks along the way and develop plans for overcoming them. This is a time for talking about the “what ifs”: What if your boss refuses to discuss your request for additional training? What if you suffer harassment after you choose to come out about your sexual preference at work? What if you do not get into the vocational–technical program you desire? By having a plan of action, clients feel more confident in this phase of the process. In addition to identifying barriers, it is also important to identify the strengths that each woman brings to the situation and to find ways of reminding her about these strengths.

Evaluating Results and Closing the Relationship

The closure session is a time for evaluation of goal progress and process. When examining the closure session through a gender filter, consider the following:

• Reflect on the journey the career counseling process has taken—what the client brought in to the first session and how the goals of the sessions changed over time. This is an important time to reinforce what the woman brought to the session—her strengths, openness, and courage to explore the roots of some of her beliefs and choices—so that she owns her part in what made this counseling process successful.
• Discuss the relationship between the counselor and client over time. How did the working alliance develop? How were tears in the alliance mended? How do both parties feel about termination?
• Let the client know of your willingness for her to return if she wants more help or just wants to let you know how things are going. It may be especially important for female clients, given their greater relational focus, to know that the support system you have provided during counseling will remain available should they have difficulties after counseling.

Fortunately, a great deal has been written over the past decade about the career development of women. Although less has focused specifically on the career development of lesbian and bisexual women, there has been significant progress made in this field as well (Croteau et al., 1999).

Closing Thoughts

We have referred to numerous sources of both empirical and conceptual literature in this chapter. The purpose of this chapter was to highlight key aspects of the gendered context; to identify their resultant outcomes in female clients; to discuss strategies and assessments for integrating knowledge of the gendered environment into counseling sessions; and, specifically, to indicate key issues of relevance at each stage of the career planning process for lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women. In doing so, we hope to have prepared the counselor to feel more personal efficacy in empowering the choices of women through career counseling.

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