Gender Similarity or Gender Difference? Contemporary Women's and Men's Career Patterns

Abstract

Career development research has often explored gender differences in and development of career patterns ( Gottfredson, 2006 ). Hyde's (2005) meta‐analysis indicated that men and women shared more similarities than differences. Applying Hyde's gender similarities hypothesis to careers, the authors conducted a 2‐stage study. Stage 1 was an analysis of career choices of couples (a socioeconomically and educationally advantaged group) announcing their wedding in the New York Times . Stage 2 was a comparison of a New York Times wedding cohort with a cohort from 11 other U.S. newspapers, examining national trends and exploring generalizability of the findings from Stage 1 of the study. Results revealed that there are shifting trends in career choices, most notably in the legal profession.