Chapter 7

Chapter 7 of Career Information, Career Counseling, and Career Development by Duane Brown, focuses on gender and the issues it plays within career counseling. Duane Brown starts the chapter off by talking about women and the number of issues they face in the work force. One of the main issues mentioned is pregnancy whether it is planned or unplanned. Pregnancy is something that men do not have to deal with and therefor are not penalized by struggling to make work adjustments, or having to postpone entering a job or starting an education program (Brown, pg. 125, 2016). As a woman I find it shocking that women are looked down upon or punished for creating a new life; someone that will go on into to the world and join the work force someday. Duane Brown also mentions that because of sex-role stereotyping women may have already limited their career chances (Brown, pg. 125, 2016).

Much of the literature regarding the oppression of women in the work force involves inequities in salary, sexual harassment, and many forms of discrimination. It is impossible to collect data on salary and make a conclusion that men are paid more than women; but it was concluded that women get paid about 20% less than their male counterparts. This can be due to discrimination or the time that women are away from their jobs due to child bearing (Brown, pg. 125, 2016). Since a large majority of men do have to leave work to bear children then they develop skills and the knowledge that is needed to earn raises or higher positions. Another reason for pay inequality is due to sex-role stereotyping where women continue to go into fields that are lower paying such as educational and medical (Brown, pg. 125, 2016).

As counselors we have two kinds of obligations to complete for our clients; first it is our duty to make our clients aware of what lies ahead in the work environment and help them develop coping skills to deal with eventualities, second it is our obligation to assert ourselves to ameliorate oppressive forces in organizations (Brown, pg. 125, 2016).

Reference

Brown, D. (2016). Career information, career counseling, and career development (11^thed.). New York: Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN 978-0-13-391777-2.