Donne in transizione al mondo del lavoro: il ruolo della self-efficacy per la definizione della vision professionale

The present study investigates the effects of self-efficacy expectations on young women's career representation. Moving from the theoretical framework of Bandura's model of self-efficacy the research explores the interaction between women's beliefs about their capabilities to produce successful performances and their attitudes towards work. Data were obtained from a sample of post-graduated vs. final year female students who chose traditional vs. nontraditional faculties, i.e. in which women are underrepresented. Self-efficacy expectations were measured in terms of women's beliefs about their personal adequacy to the work environment, and in terms of successful career expectations (career self-efficacy). Results show that women generally have a weak sense of self-efficacy, particularly for what concern their career self-efficacy. Moreover, women with high assurance in their personal capabilities approach their future job as a challenge to be mastered rather than as a threat to be avoided. As to the interaction between career self-efficacy and work representation, data analysis suggests that women with a strong career self-efficacy attributes more importance to personal success achievement and responsibility assumption than women who doubt their career capabilities. Furthermore, strong career self-efficacy women assign less weight to social relations and they are going to assume more competitive attitudes than women with weak self-efficacy. Therefore, women with successful career expectations seems to show a work representation which is comparable to the typical men's approach to work. On the whole, these findings underline the link between self-efficacy beliefs and gender-role prescriptions about work approaches.