Social Factors of Educational and Career Choices Essay

Social constructs are an impactful factor that determines the demographics in career choices, including family structures. In particular, Flores (2018) criticized the assumption that specific communities have monolithic identities that create gendered career influences based on culture. Instead, he stated that “family forms are shaped by the adaptations of family members to the social situations in which they are embedded,” reflecting on the changes in parental messages relative to life circumstances (Flores, 2018:4). Hence, there was a gradual dissolution of the assumption that Latino women were prone to choosing pink collar jobs traditionally based on the sociocultural construct that women nurture and care for the home. However, Latinas have demonstrated a varying trend in advancing into non-traditional positions in medicine influenced by parental messages (Flores, 2018). Modern trends show that immigrant parents encourage education as a path to financial independence from men as their mothers advise the adaptive discouraging dependence on the man. Conversely, fathers encouraged the same independence to their daughters to seek opportunities that they lacked as immigrants (Flores, 2018). As such, the concept deviates from traditional assumptions to expand the conceptualization of gender and other social factors.

The idea most reflective of my experiences is the masculinity privilege that instigates academic gender gaps. Morris (2008) highlighted the academic differences in that girls were more successful in education than boys in society. He presented that the difference was not a bias or disadvantage based on gender but a construct of masculinity employed by boys. Inadvertently, boys develop masculinity privileges that detract from academic efforts. As such, among my peers, it was more acknowledgeable when a boy performed in sports comparable to education, focusing on getting drafted for sports scholarships. The concept can be employed in my current life in sensitizing those around me to dispel the thought that educational achievement is emasculated. Conclusively, these social constructs relating to disadvantaged groups of society influence occupational choices deviating from the traditional constructs evolving with changes in life experiences.

References

Flores, Glenda M. 2018. “Pursuing Medicina [Medicine]: Latina Physicians and Parental Messages on Gendered Career Choices.”Sex Roles, 81(1), pp. 59-73.

Morris, Edward W. 2008. “‘Rednecks,’ ‘Rutters,’ and rithmetic.”Gender & society, 22(6), pp. 728–751.