| Abstract: | Purpose: The purpose of this was to identify personality characteristics of professional female workers in business occupations that are traditionally dominated in number by men. The following objectives were formulated to accomplish this purpose. 1. To determine manifest needs ot professional female workers in selected business oriented occupations. 2. To determine the relationship and association of selected variables in conjunction with the manifest needs of professional workers in selected business oriented occupations. Procedure: Professional women from accounting, management, real estate, and college teaching were administered to Edwards Personnel Preference Schedule to measure manifest needs; a biographical questionnaire accompanied the EPPS to elicit information concerning occupation, age, marital status, and education. Data were gathered at meeting of professional organizations for accountants, real estate women, and managers, and on college campuses for college teachers. Analysis of variance and intercorrelation statistics were used to analyze data. Summary of Results: After data were processed, the following characteristic were observed. 1. Thirty-five percent of the women received some or all of their education in 28 states other than Texas. The mean number of years of education for 120 professionals was 14.6 years. 2. There was a relatively even distribution of women in each age level. 3. The majority of women was presently married, one-fourth were widowed or divorced, and fourteen percent were single. 4. Manifest needs of the professional women were compared with the normative group of general adult women. Where differences did occur, they were relatively well pronounced. Needs producing significantly different scores at the .01 level were: achievement, dominance, heterosexuality -- higher for the professional women; order, affiliation, succorance, and abasement -- lower for business women. 5. Mean scores of the four groups of professional women were compared with each other to determine which of the fifteen needs were significantly different among the groups. The greatest difference was found among the groups on the EPPS and Abasement. Other needs indicating significant differences were achievement, exhibition, and dominance. The least amount of differences was found among the groups on affiliation. 6. A comparison of the needs exhibited by the professional business women with selected variables was made. Results of these comparisons were. A. Age -- Significant at .05 level of confidence were needs of deference, order, autonomy, and change. Older women indicated more need for deference and orders, while younger women indicated more need for autonomy and change. At the .01 level were affiliation and heterosexuality. The older the women, the more need shown for affiliation; the younger the woman, the greater the need for heterosexuality. B. Education -- At the .05 level of confidence were needs of autonomy and dominance. These needs were more important to women as level of education increased. Significant at the .01 level were needs of achievement, exhibition, intraception, abasement, and nurturance. The higher the level of education, the higher need manifested for intraception, abasement, and nurturance. C. Marital Status -- The EPPs need of deference was significant at the .01 level of confidence for married women. These women exhibited more need for deference than single women or widowed or divorces women. At the .05 level of confidence were EPPS needs of succorance and dominance for married women. They exhibited more need for these two EPPS variables than did the other two groups. |
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