Career aspiration and gender role development in young girls

Career aspirations of 66 middle-class girls (aged 8 to 13) were examined in terms of the dichotomy between a pioneering career choice (a career in a currently male-dominated field) and a traditional choice (a career in a currently female-dominated field). Of the girls, 32 had been exposed in utero to various amounts of exogenous estrogens/progesterone and/or thyroid hormones administered to their mothers for minor pregnancy complications; the remaining subjects were controls. While the treatment group did not differ significantly from the control group in type of career choice, prenatal hormone administration was associated with less persistent tomboyism in childhood. Therefore, results are presented for the two groups separately and combined. We assessed career aspiration as it may relate to age, IQ, other aspects of gender role development, and various family characteristics. We found that pioneers differed from traditionals in several ways: (1) Pioneers tended to have higher IQ scores than traditionals; (2) pioneers more often were persistent tomboys throughout childhood; (3) pioneers were several months older than traditionals; (4) parents of pioneers were more highly educated than parents of traditionals. While pioneers were more often persistent tomboys, they did not differ in other aspects of gender role development, as in the sex of their friends or anticipation of marriage and motherhood. Since prenatal hormone treatment was associated with a lower incidence of persistent tomboyism and tomboyism was related to pioneering career choice, an indirect effect of estrogen/progesterone treatment during pregnancy on career choice is suggested. However, since the relationships between individual or family characteristics and career choice were the same within both the treatment and control groups, we feel confident that we have identified replicable factors that facilitate nontraditional career choices in young girls of middle-class background.