Secretarial and management students: Attitudes,attributes, and career choice considerations

Secretarial and management students were compared on characteristics that have differentiated between traditional and nontraditional career women. Fifty-five female secretarial students and 55 female management (bachelor of commerce) students completed the following measures: (a) the Work and Family Orientation Questionnaire (WOFO); (b) the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS); (c) the Powerful Others, Personal Control, and Chance Scales (I-E Scale); (d) the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ); and (e) a measure of career choice considerations. The groups differed on two aspects of the WOFO (competitiveness and desire to master difficult intellectual challenges), and on Personal Control, sex role orientation (PAQ), and career choice considerations. The results are discussed with respect to sex role socialization and the denigration of secretarial work.