Women's motivation related to mastery, career salience, and career aspiration: A multivariate model focusing on the effects of sex role socialization

This model focuses on three motivation dimensions, career salience, career aspiration, and mastery, in an effort to understand better why women contribute less to the arts, sciences, and humanities. The model, conceived in the 1970s and extended in the 1980s, is grounded in social learning theory and emphasizes how sex role socialization affects women's career motivation. This model guided the design of a longitudinal study, first funded in 1978, for which data was collected in 1980, 1990, and 1991 to 1993. Participants in 1980 were 9th and 12th grade students in six high schools in the Midwest: two rural, two suburban, and two inner city. Measures included to test the model are briefly presented, as are summary findings.