Your Daughter's Career Aspirations

Your Daughter's Career Aspirations

Judy Olian

(Judy Olian is Dean of Penn State's Smeal College of Business and a leading expert in strategic human resources management.)

I've written about this before but a study just published gave me renewed cause for worry. It's about teenagers' career attitudes, especially towards business. Particularly noteworthy are differences between the career attitudes of teenage boys and girls.

The study was conducted by The Committee of 200, a professional organization of women entrepreneurs and leaders, in partnership with Simmons College - School of Management. The authors surveyed almost 4300 teenage boys and girls grades 7 to 12 in public and private schools across the U.S.

While there are clear gender differences, let's start with the similarities. Both teenage boys and girls tend to view large businesses and corporations more favorably than small, family owned businesses. While they have a favorable view of corporate America's role in providing jobs and delivering needed goods and services, both genders are somewhat jaded in their view of the impact of corporate America on communities (only a third see it as positive), or of the honesty and ethics of business (only about 1 in 5 are supportive). Such ambivalence does not help attract either group into business.

The study noted differences between teenage boys' and girls' career aspirations. Boys are far more likely to list the sciences, technology or engineering as career choices (17 percent of boys versus 7 percent of girls) while girls are more likely to list other professions such as law and medicine as their probable career choice (49 percent of girls versus 25 percent of boys). Only 9 percent of girls view business as a likely career, versus 15 percent of boys. Girls anticipate being less excited, satisfied or relaxed in a business career than boys. Being in charge of other people is less important to girls (22 percent versus 37 percent for boys), and they are less driven to be their own boss (31 percent of girls versus 51 percent of boys).

By their teenage years, boys and girls have developed different self concepts. Girls report that they are not as effective managing money, and less capable of understanding and working with numbers. Since they associate business careers with numerical literacy, this lack of confidence serves as a deterrent for girls to choose business as a career. Making the world a better place is a more important determinant of career choice for girls than boys (55 to 43 percent), while for boys making lots of money dominates their job choice (75 percent of boys to 56 percent of girls). Both genders expect they'll have to support themselves, but boys are more likely to assume they'll have the financial burden to support their families. Although both girls and boys expect to work in full time careers, 60 percent of girls expect to take time out of their careers when they have children, versus 11 percent of boys.

Role models are important in career choices. Girls with parents in business were more likely to list business as a career preference, and while mothers are the dominant source of career advice for girls (as are fathers for boys), fathers are more influential among teenage girls gravitating toward business versus other careers.

Why obsess about these numbers? Because they give us a glimpse into the future leadership of America's companies. Guess what - little will have changed. Business leaders of tomorrow will be disproportionately male as they are today. A reminder: In 2002 there are 6 women among the Fortune 500 CEOs.

What's wrong with this picture? A lot, if you're worried about the quality of leadership and innovation in the marketplace. We'll be missing a significant talent base that - while contributing in other fields like law and medicine - will continue to be under-represented in directing and enriching the world of business.

If we care to attract the best and brightest women and men into business careers, we'll need to start early. Parents as well as the educational system must be especially focused on developing girls' self confidence in their numerical and technological proficiency so that they are more likely to self select into various traditionally male-dominated careers, including business. Students tend to grasp what it means to be a lawyer, doctor, engineer, or physicist. But they are less likely to understand the nature of jobs in business, and this is especially true for girls. From an early age they should be exposed to business professionals who can provide more concrete examples of positions in business. And kids need corporate leaders who inspire them, whose contributions they admire, who make the world a better place, who represent the person they want to be, men as well as women.

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