Sex-Role Attitudes of Malaysian Women: Implications for Career Development and Counselling

Abstract

The increase in the number of women entering the labour force in the past half decade has reflected a growing consciousness of the role and status of women. This phenomenon has also been observed in Malaysia where the increasing involvement of women in the manufacturing and industrial sector moreover, raises a number of issues concerning their welfare. Considering the perception of the traditional role of women in Malaysia, an important area of interest is the relationship between sex-role attitudes and career development and counselling. It has been posited that the sex-role attitudes are an important factor in the career mobility of women such that women in non-traditional careers would have a different sex-role perception from their traditional counterparts. Studies conducted by Yanico et al. (1978), O'Connel (1979), Valentine et al. (1975), and Tipton (1976), indicate that samples of both women and men who had non-traditional curriculum choices or chose nontraditional occupations had liberal or contemporary attitudes towards the roles of women in society. However, respondents in the samples who were in traditional and neo-traditional curriculum choices or who chose to be in traditional occupations had traditional or conservative attitudes.