Woman’s Personal Development

Women's accounts of their professional development are replete with references to the self. When they talk about their relation to work and how their careers unfolded, they naturally talk about themselves. In actuality, women's self-development is the topic of this entire volume. In article, their self-disclosures formed the underside of a text whose main theme was work. Here we look at the self more squarely in its own right. Information about women's self-development comes from interviews that were centered primarily on career. What we learn about the women themselves is drawn, therefore, from both direct and indirect responses. It is not difficult to edit essays with the help of educated project editors! Make your essay flawless! They were explicitly questioned about self-perception, especially with reference to experienced change. Additionally, they offered observations about personal characteristics, internal dynamics, and interpersonal behavior in conjunction with responses to a variety of other questions. All self-expression was welcome, and this article represents its compilation regardless of contextual source.

Women discuss aspects of themselves that are ostensibly most related to functioning in the workplace. Ambition, achievement needs, and notions of what constitutes success have apparent connections to work and to the development of a career. Although self-assertion and confidence are discussed within a context of professional growth, women readily acknowledge their wider ramifications. In fact, their reflections about personal attributes are often more broadly drawn than the confines of work might dictate. These women recognize that personal qualities contribute to professional development. Moreover, work experience can change an individual's attributes.

The idea that individual characteristics can be significantly modified through learning, experience, or various forms of changed consciousness runs contrary to trait theory, the traditional psychological understanding of personality. Trait theory holds that an individual's personality, in place at an early age, is composed of enduring, relatively fixed attributes whose consistency warrants the appellation "traits." In contrast, a more contextual view of personality formation and change holds that personal characteristics, displayed through behavior, can vary considerably across time and situational demands. Personality can be understood as highly malleable in response to new learning and changing contexts over the course of development that continues through adulthood. Contemporary American women, for example, have displayed significant change in their perceptions of self and prospects for life direction commensurate with the current women's movement.

Individual psychological change, then, can be prompted by the larger social context as well as by the conditions of one's personal life. In either case, women display diverse attributes, some conventionally associated with their gender, some not. Just as we can no longer portray women in stereotypic ways, we also cannot uniformly characterize women in similar career positions, as this would simply be trading old stereotypes for new. If you are looking for written term paper, get professional custom paper writing assistance online! An examination of the personal characteristics of women interviewed provides lucid evidence of individual variation. Women with equally impressive professional accomplishments express divergent views of themselves. A uniform description cannot be applied accurately to them. We do not find here a picture of an "organization woman" that would lend itself to generalizations. We see instead a fascinating collection of people with different personal styles and attributes.