Gender Bias Among Counseling Trainees: A Study of Case Conceptualization
✍ Scribed by SUSAN R. SEEM; ELAINE JOHNSON
- Publisher
- American Counseling Association
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 715 KB
- Volume
- 37
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0011-0035
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Counseling trainees' responses on free-response dependent measures to 2 client case vignettes were examined for possible gender bias. Gender bias was found for clients, both women and men, who displayed nontraditional gender role behavior.
Since "sex bias" in counseling was posited over 25 years ago (e. g., Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, Rosenkrantz & Vogel, 19701, counselors' attitudes and behaviors toward female clients have been examined extensively. For the next 10 to 15 years, research focused on whether sex bias against female clients existed. Results were inconclusive (Davidson & Abramowitz, 1980; Jones, Krupnick & Kerig, 1987; Sheridan, 1982; Smith, 1980), with some studies indicating evidence of bias while others did not. Critics of #is research have argued that the methods used were inadequate to detect bias and have also advocated differentiating the concepts of gender and sex. Gender has come to be understood as a social construction, as the "psychological, social, and cultural features and characteristics frequently associated with the biological categories of male and female"