A new report from Monash University academics looks critically into the common catch cry ‘women can do anything they choose’.
Monash Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice (CYPEP) has released this report entitled Young Women Choosing Careers: Who Decides? to mark International Youth Day 2022 (Friday August 12).
The researchers have tried to answer how much choice do young Australian women really have? Further, the researchers look into the key idea or personality that shapes their choices?
In their study, the authors found that young women:
- Prefer tertiary education pathways that lead to traditional professional careers
- Imagine only a narrow range of possible selves, which represents real risks for eventual realisation given current employment market realities
- Feel constrained in their career choices and lack confidence about realising their possible selves given ‘who they are or where they come from’
- Lack career direction and knowledge about what careers best suit them, despite thei imaginations of possible selves
- Feel a high degree of career stress, triggered by career uncertainty, indecision, worries about job availability, and perceptions of constrained career choices
- Rely on others (family, peers, school communities) to help make career decisions and craft their possible selves
- Worry about others’ approval of their career choices and possible selves
This study is focused on young women in their final years of schooling and their post-school study and
career aspirations. The researchers note in their paper:
“The data presented provides a window into young women’s experiences when choosing their career destinations in school, and how their transitions to post-school life are enmeshed in long-term social, political and economic change.”
Researchers point out that the study draws on the responses of more than 1,300 young women who were students in Years 10–12 (the final years of compulsory schooling in Australia) in 2018 at four schools in Victoria. The researchers add:
“It reveals the complexities involved in how young women develop and navigate their possible career selves. It also highlights the diverse career-related emotions, beliefs and experiences they have as they do this.”
Other key findings of the report include:
- A third of young women were highly stressed about choosing the right career
- One in five young women were overwhelmed by the career information and choices they face.
- Two in five young women said they had no career direction.
- 39% of young women were concerned about ever achieving a real career.
- Nearly 40% of young women were worried that their studies will not lead to a “real” career.
- Around a third of young women felt unemployable.
- Over a third of young women who had chosen a career were still anxious about their future careers.
In their conclusion, the researchers observe that “the results of this survey are complex and dense.”
“The results suggest a multiplicity of forces and factors shaping the development of our young women’s possible selves. It is worth reflecting on just a handful of them and the implications for those engaged in youth policy and education practice. Many careers educators throughout Australia work in a dynamic and rapidly changing environment shaped by wider forces, such as the changing labour market.”
The researchers suggest that to make Australia’s changing landscape more visible to students and families, better ways of informing parents and carers should be developed with the help of policy-makers, government departments, and other stakeholders.
The authors of this study are Dr Joanne Gleeson, Professor Lucas Walsh, Dr Beatriz Gallo Cordoba, Dr Masha Mikola, Dr Catherine Waite, and Blake Cutler from CYPEP which is a multi-disciplinary research centre that undertakes research into the social, political, and economic factors that affect young people’s lives.