Predicting College Women's Aspirations From Evaluations of the Housewife and Work Role

We hypothesize that college women's decisions to pursue nontraditional achievement goals are influenced by other women and men's evaluations of the traditional housewife as well as the work-achievement role. Questionnaire data on role perception by self and significant others, maternal employment, the presence of specific achievement aids, SES and two types of achievement aspirations confirmed this expectation for a sample of 492 undergraduate women. Degree expectations and career orientation each imply somewhat different conflicts with the traditional female role. On this basis, we hypothesized and found evidence for relationships between each type of achievement aspiration and evaluations of the work role, the housewife role and the importance of achievement aids. One of the best predictors of both aspiration variables was the father's perceived disparagement of women who were unemployed housewives.