The mother-daughter relationship as a resource for Korean women's career aspirations

Korean college women's career aspirations were examined among 482 Korean co llege women in South Korea. The inability of women to envision themselves i n a career has been largely attributed to formal education that perpetuates gender inequality. As such, this study investigated the inter-relationship s between external factors (school experiences and peer influences) and int ernal factors (maternal influences with the mother-daughter relationship) i n Korean women's development of self-perception and in the significance of their sex-role behaviors (career orientation and feminist identification). The structural equation model (SEM) utilized in this study revealed that Ko rean women's career orientation was determined directly by their nontraditi onal sex-role attitudes and by a close, continuous, and satisfactory relati onship with their mothers. Overall, maternal influences on the development of daughters' career orientation outweigh other factors encountered in scho ols, and emerge as key predictor variables in Korean women's career develop ment.