The Relationship of Gender Role Attitudes With Career Aspirations and Career Choices Among Young Adults

Globally, gender roles have seen a sharp shift as they become more egalitarian in the face of waves of gender equality movements that have swept the developed nations. This paper looks at changing gender roles in Pakistan from the vantage point of career aspirations and career choices that are credited as the driving forces behind the emancipation and liberalization of women in today’s society. The study used a sample of 126 intermediate students (63 boys, 63 girls) who were administered the Islamic Attitude Towards Women Scale (Khalid & Freize, 2004) and Career Aspirations Scale (Gray & O’Brien, 2007). The career choices of the participants were elicited by the use of a semi-structured interview. The career choices were then divided into traditional and non-traditional careers in accordance with male-dominated and female-dominated occupation groups (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, 2014). The results revealed that men had more conservative gender role attitudes and lower career aspirations than women. Furthermore, women chose more non-traditional and male-dominated careers for themselves than men. More egalitarian gender role attitudes were found to be associated with higher career aspirations and non-traditional career choices among men and women. The study entails important implications for the changing gender roles and social status of women in today’s Pakistani society and draws significant association between career aspirations and social emancipation of women.