Dolgykh L. The impact of gender stereotypes upon young people's career aspirations.

The dissertation is devoted to the study of the influence of gender stereotypes on university students' career aspirations. Theoretical approaches towards the problem of professional self-realization and stages of professional development are analyzed. The author defines professional self-realization as a complex and multistage process of embodiment of personality's inner potential into the outer social environment through the engaging into professional relations. The distinguishing feature of this process is development of person's professional skills and abilities and the results of the process are feeling of satisfaction from the contribution made into the society. Professional self-realization is also considered as closely connected with a concrete social situation of time and place. It is pointed out in the dissertation that personality's need to become as competent and skilled as possible and, consequently, a need to move upward on the profession ladder and to acquire more difficult and responsible job is an undivided part of the process of professional self-realization. By such professional and status upward mobility the author understands career, which is defined in the dissertation as successful professional life that includes, firstly, improvement of professional skills and increase in professional competency, and, secondly, professional promotion. The author distinguishes objective and subjective career components, according to which different types of career aspirations and strategies of their realizations are proposed and analyzed. The content of Ukrainian society's gender stereotypes is analyzed and the theoretical model of gender specificity of professional self-realization is described. The author analyzes how university students perceive their future professional self-realization. The study provides comparative analysis of men's and women's level of career aspirations and strategies of their realization. The author also suggests both qualitative and quantitative procedures of diagnosing university students' gender stereotypes and how stereotypic their gender identities are. According to the suggested procedures the author examined gender stereotypes that university youth possess and proved the existence of influence of those gender stereotypes on men's and women's career aspirations, as well as described specificity of that influence. As results of the study show gender stereotypes as social expectations provide images of sex roles and gender appropriate patterns of behavior. They further interiorize and influence personality's values system and his or her choices in planning professional activity and realization of one's subjective perspective of professional self-realization. It has also been found that university senior students agree with the existing gender stereotypes regarding the professional sphere. According to these stereotypes self-realization in profession is a social norm and expectation for men, which is explained by their better professional qualities. While prescriptive sphereof women's self-realization is family and performing the role of a wife and a mother. The study results prove that men's subjective perspectives of professional self-realization, their career aspiration and strategies of its realization are built according to the gender male norms of success/status, firmness and anti-femininity. Such orientations lead to unproductive career strategies in which objective components are overestimated, and subjective ones are significantly underestimated. Women's perspective of professional self-realization are more oriented towards subjective components and their career aspirations are lower that men's ones. Overall study results prove the existence of influence of gender stereotypes on young people's career aspirations. This influence slows down and distorts the process of person's professional self-realization.