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Envisioning Positions of Leadership: The Expectations of University Students in Virginia and Puerto Rico
Author(s) -
Lips Hilary M.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/0022-4537.00242
Subject(s) - anticipation (artificial intelligence) , vision , west virginia , psychology , social psychology , gender studies , sociology , geography , anthropology , archaeology , artificial intelligence , computer science
Eighty‐six university students in Virginia and 46 in Puerto Rico were asked to imagine themselves in a series of powerful roles, describe what they imagined, and rate each role's positivity and possibility. Among the Virginia students, women were more likely than men to anticipate relationship problems with powerful roles and to mention physical appearance. The Virginia women rated images of themselves in powerful roles more negatively than did the Puerto Rico women. Women in the two samples did not differ in their frequency of anticipating relationship problems with powerful roles, but they differed in the correlates of such anticipation. For the women in the Virginia sample only, anticipating relationship problems was associated with low self‐rated possibility of achieving these roles. Whereas young women do envision ambitious leadership possibilities for themselves, they apparently struggle to accommodate these visions to the contradictory prescriptions for powerful women.