Despite efforts to improve careers education, it is still seen to be largely ineffective. In addition, young people’s career aspirations have changed little in recent decades. OECD data from more than 40 countries shows that most young people expect to work within just one of 10 popular fields by the age of 30, such as being a doctor, a teacher or a business manager (Mann et al., 2020). These choices have changed little in decades despite new and emergent areas of work, such as in the digital economy and artificial intelligence.
Our research explored the career choices of young women and what shapes them, and indicates that (many) are stressed and potentially disconnected from the realities of the contemporary job market. The study involved 1,339 female secondary school students in the southern Australian state of Victoria, and provides a striking view of the current experiences of young women in Australia when choosing their work destinations in school. The sample included young women from schools in low, medium and high socioeconomic areas in metropolitan and regional Victoria from both government and non-government sectors.
A mixed methods approach was utilised in order to create a measure of Career Identity (CI). Sociological and psychological-based identity and CI literature, as well as career development frameworks and current research regarding youth transitions to employment post-education were reviewed as a first step. The quantitative analysis reported here is based on bi-variate associations tested using chi-squared tests of association between variables and reported as relative frequencies.
