Relationship of Personality Traits and Gender Role Attitudes: A Comparison of Traditional and non- Traditional Professionals

: This study was conducted to examine the relationship of personality traits (i.e., dominance, self-acceptance, self-control, flexibility, sociability, capacity for status and communality) and Gender Role attitudes among professionals of traditional and non-traditional occupations using selected scales from Urdu Version of California Personality Inventory (CPI) and Gender Role Attitudes Scale. A sample of 152 professionals from traditional and non-traditional occupations (criteria of defining traditional and nontraditional professions were based on literature). The findings suggested positive relationship among personality traits and gender role attitudes. The linear Regression analysis showed predicting role of personality traits for gender role attitudes. The significant differences were found on personality traits, gender role attitudes among traditional and non-traditional professionals, and gender as well. In addition, implications and limitations, as well as directions for future research are discussed.


Introduction
Selection of a career or an occupation is a phenomenon of great importance in today's world. Choosing an occupation holds a significant place in academic, vocational and organizational settings. Occupation refers to the one's job related to some particular task, or his profession. It may require some advance training or education and may be for the sake of earning money (BBC English Dictionary, 1995). The occupation of our lives and meaning of these occupations are essential contributors to the pace and direction of life flow (Hasselkus, 2002). People develop occupational images and of themselves to determine their acceptable occupational alternatives. However, the jobs available to them may be very different from their acceptable options. One's abilities, interests and life plans determine what one will be available to do. Sociability for a particular job is influenced by the number of factors including parental influence, ethical background, socioeconomic status, stereotypical behavior, social pressure, religion and differences in male and female and differences in job characteristics and personal characteristics and understanding.

Literature Review
Many theorists agree that personality is a predictive factor in vocational choices (Holland, 1996;Osipow 1968& Roe, 1972. Holland (1985) believed that career choice is an expression or an extension of one's personality into the world of work. Savickas (2002) have indicated that our personal identities and characteristics develop not only from being the member of workforce but also from the particular occupation, we hold. As with developing a coherent sense of identity, the development of occupational plans follows a sequence that involves examination of personal traits, abilities, interests and integrating one's part with one's hope for future. Literature also suggests those ones' personality traits lead to ones' social attitudes. It has been identified through studies that perceived gender roles have significant impact on occupational choices among cultural constraints (Holland, 1985). Based on the psychology of individual differences and analysis of occupational trait, trait factor theories of vocational choice emphasize the relationship of individual's personal characteristics to his or her selection of an occupation for career. According to Holland (1992), individuals are attracted to a given career by their particular personalities and numerous variables that constitute their backgrounds. Career choice is an expression of, or an extension of, personality into the world of work followed by subsequent identification with specific occupational stereotypes. A comparison of self with perception of an occupation and subsequent acceptance or rejection is a major determinant in career choice (Holland, 1992). The key concept behind Holland's environmental models and environmental influences is that individuals are attracted to a particular role demand of an occupational environment that meets their personal needs and provide them with satisfaction (Zunker, 1997). This model also emphasizes the significance of environment and personality interaction in formation of our behaviors and attitudes.
Gender-role attitudes-refer to the beliefs we have of ourselves and others regarding appropriate male and female personality traits and activities. Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture and time (Pleck, 1991). Two types of gender roles are generally found in each culture i.e. traditional and nontraditional. Traditional gender roles considered girls being more suitable in the job helping others and dealing with public. However, male job concepts are related to earn a lot of money and dealing with technology (McQuiad, 2003). Many men and women make choices for their careers that indicate their traditional gender role attitudes and women as a sizeable group continue to be employed in a far range of occupations than men (US bureau of labor statistics 2001). Bem (1981) found that gender role identity influenced an individual's behavioral responsiveness and mastery percepts, which engaged in, gender typed tasks and non-gender typed tasks. A gender typed attitude has been associated with the selection of fields (Gianakos, 2000). Though most of the literature investigating the non-traditional career choices have focused on women only (Rainey & Borders, 1997); the importance of dynamics of gender role attitudes and choice of career have also been focus of few studies (Dodson & Borders, 2006). According to Abraham and Sigelman (as cited in Cai & Liau, 1995) traditional gender, role attitude may cause people to choose sex-typical occupations and thus perpetuate occupational sex segregation. Thus, traditional gender role attitudes result in preferences for traditional occupations and vice versa. Labeling of traditional occupation is related to the ratio of gender in a particular occupation and with the compatibility of expected gender role attitudes. In our society, mostly people opt for traditional occupations that go along with their expected gender roles. Nurse, teacher, doctor, beautician are traditional occupations for women and lawyers, engineering, pilot, army personnel, scientist are considered traditional occupations for women (Aziz, 2001).
One could expect that individuals with certain personality patterns and interest may be more inclined to look for and do certain types of jobs as it is said that there is a theoretical relationship between personality and professional preferences (Malik, 2001). Empirical studies have shown significant personality differences among traditional and non -traditional professionals (Lemaku, 1984;Swakto, 1981;Dodson & Borders, 2006). Women in male typical occupations were to be found to be aggressive, possessive of leadership potential, planful and less stereotyped as compared to females in traditional occupations. Whereas non -traditional males were revealed as higher on social and dominance traits as compared to traditional males. The existence of differential occupational gender stereotype of the shared beliefs of the men versus women has been reported in various studies (i.e., Schlossberg & Goodman, 1972). Gender type's individuals restrict their career activities and choices to those consistent with their gender role attitudes (Gianakos, 2000). Feminine gender roles are associated with a choice of women dominated occupations and whereas masculine gender role identity is associated with choice of men dominated occupation (Helwing, 1998). Moreover, much of the research has been conducted on women in male typical occupations (Betz & Fitgeral, 1987;Mazen, & Lemkau, 2004;Mendez & Crawfold, 2002). Though debate of traditionally is of more concern to women due to different reason, it is equally important to explore the personality traits, gender role attitudes and other concerned variables that may results in traditional or non-traditional career orientation of men. Although, western studies are exploring the role of personality traits in determining gender role attitudes and choice of careers from decades, literature still need to establish this relationship in various cultures. Career choice or decisionmaking is difficult especially for people in developing society like Pakistan due to limited opportunities. In our traditional oriented society, people are significantly influenced by gender role stereotypes and therefore choose occupations that traditionally considered appropriate for males and females. Women in our society all mostly engaged in occupations such as teachers, doctors, nurses etc and men are mostly employed as police officer, army, personnel doctor, lecturer, computer personnel that are maleconcentrated occupations. As with the passage of time, as society is changing, women are clinging to nontraditional occupations such as police, army, G.D. pilots, managers though their ratio is considerably low. The major approach for describing the nature of career choice involved the classification of preferences of choice according to the degree to which they are traditional versus non-traditional (Siddiqa, 2004). Traditionalism refers to the degree to which a career choice is socially traditional in terms of an individual's gender.
The level of career choice traditionally has been determined with reference to the percentage same versus opposite gender employees in an occupation's stereotypical gender linkage in a particular society (Barak, Golan & Fisher, 1998). According to US department of labor, nontraditional occupations are defined as jobs in which 25 percent or less of the workforce is female. Bank officer, police, engineer, Architect, Airline Pilot, taxi driver, Surveyor, Political Scientist, Religious leader are some non -traditional occupations for women (US department of labor, 2001). According to Minnesota Department of Economic Security Research and Statistics Office (2006) Librarians, Stenographers, Deitions, Nurses, Hair Stylists, Personal and Home Care Aides, Occupational Therapists are some occupations that are non-traditional for men. Besides limited opportunities and traditional settings, there are individuals who are seeking non-traditional careers. Therefore, it is important to address that what makes such non -traditional professionals to opt non-traditional careers. Thus, the extent to which individuals have chosen traditional and non-traditional career fields may be related to the extent, which those choices are correspondent to their personality orientations. The present study is a venture to explore the personality traits and gender role attitudes of men and women in traditional and nontraditional occupations. Literature suggests personality and gender role attitudes as influential predictor for different choices by men and women for different occupations. Many studies have explained the different influential factor such as, socio economic status, education, social pressure, parental influence, ethnic background (i.e., French & Strachan, 2008;Sardar, 2009); but little attention is paid to personality traits as having a significant role in developing gender role attitudes and making career choice. Any occupation, which has a variety of specialties in it, is perceived in varying ways by those who are planning to join it and these differences are associated with the personality traits (Raylesberg, 1985). Khan (2009) found that gender roles play significant role in relationship of personality traits and choice of the occupation. It has also been found that significant gender differences also exists in traditional and non-tradition professionals with reference to organizational factors (Shujaat, 2011).
Keeping in view the need to fill in the gap in existing literature, present study was designed to explore relationship between personality traits and gender role attitudes that exist among individuals working in traditional and nontraditional occupations. Generally following hypothesis were formulated: H1: Personality traits lead to gender role attitudes. H2: Professionals from traditional occupations have different Personality traits and gender role attitudes as compared to professionals from non-traditional occupations. H3: Male professionals show more traditional gender role attitudes as compared to female professionals.

Methodology
Sample: A sample of 152 professionals consisted of 80 individuals (40 men and 40 women) working in traditional occupations and 72 (36 men and 36 women) working in non-traditional occupations was taken from Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The sample of males working in non-traditional occupations include 12 beauticians, 12 nurses and 12 primary school teachers whereas that of females included 12 lawyers, 12 police women and 12 bank officers. The sample of males working in traditional occupations include 10 bankers, 10 police men, 10 Physicians and 10 lawyers, whereas data of females was collected from 10 primary school teachers, 10 beauticians, 10 nurses and 10 gynecologists. The age range of sample was 24 years to 40 (M= 32.46 SD= 3.51). The traditional and nontraditional occupations were selected based on the literature (Siddiqa, 2004). Ahmad (1999), originally developed by Gough, 1987) was used to assess personality traits within the general population. Only seven subscales of CPI have been selected based on the literature review and were more relevant with the objective of the present study. The selected scales were dominance (36 items), capacity for status (28 items), self-acceptance (28 items), sociability (32 items), self-control (38 items), communality (38 items) and flexibility (28 items). Total items of the scale for the present study are 216. The higher scores on each scale indicating areas of strength and lower scores areas of weaknesses.

Measures: California Psychological Inventory: Urdu version of California Psychological Inventory (CPI) by
Gender Role Attitude Scale (GRAS): Gender Role Attitude Scale (Kamal & Saqib, 2004) that was a modified version of Sex Role attitude Scale developed by Anila & Ansari (1992) was used in present study. The 30 items in it assessing the attitudes regarding roles of men and women inside and outside their homes; parental responsibilities of men and women occupational abilities of men and women; vital life decisions; personal relationship between men and women and level and type of academic achievement or men and women. It is a 5-point rating scale on which respondent has to express his/her degree of agreement or disagreement. Half of the items are phrased in traditional manner and half in modern. Scoring for traditional items is reversed so that the high total score indicates modern views. Higher scores indicate more modern gender role attitudes whereas lower scores indicate more traditional gender role attitudes.

Procedure:
The professionals were approached at their workplace from different areas of Islamabad and Rawalpindi cities. Professionals were briefed about the topic, nature and the purpose of the study and were assured about the confidentiality of information shared. Participants of the study were instructed about both the questionnaires (CPI & GRAS) separately. They were asked to read each statement carefully and then respond within the given options and were requested to not leave any statement unanswered. Participants were given enough time to fill the questionnaires without any pressure. Any question raised by the participants during the data gathering process was answered urgently. Participants were thanked for their participation and cooperation.

Data Analysis and Results
Data was subject to SPSS 17 for analysis to test the study hypothesis. Corelation matrix, Regression analysis, and t-test was employeed for this purpose. Initially, Test of Univariate normality included Skewness (-.40 -.43) and Kurtosis (.06 -.69 ) determined the normality of the variables scores among the current study data.    Table 3 indicates mean differences for traditional and nontraditional professionals on the selected folk scales of CPI and GRAS. The results indicate significant mean differences between traditional and nontraditional professionals as findings of above indicates that nontraditional professionals scored higher on all selected folk scale of CPI as compared to traditional professionals. The results indicate significant mean differences between traditional and nontraditional professionals on Gender Role Attitude Scale (t = 5.42, df =150, p <. 000) as the mean differences demonstrate that traditional professionals scored higher on traditional gender role attitude and non Traditional Professionals scored higher on nontraditional gender role attitudes.  Table 4 indicates significant mean differences for male and female from both traditional and nontraditional occupations on the sub scales of CPI and GRAS. For traditional professionals findings depict that male scored higher on dominance subscale of CPI and on traditional gender role attitude only whereas female scored higher on all other subscales of CPI including sociability, capacity for status, selfacceptance, self-control, commonality, and flexibility. Similarly, for GRAS females working in traditional occupations scored higher on nontraditional attitudes subscale and on total gender role attitude scale. Furthermore, findings in above table presented that for nontraditional professional's female scored higher on all subscales (dominance, sociability, capacity for status, self-acceptance, self-control, communality, and flexibility) of CPI and on total gender role attitude scale as well as nontraditional gender role attitude. Males from nontraditional occupation scored higher on traditional gender role attitudes.

Discussion:
Occupational psychology is a comparatively a less studied area of Psychology in Pakistan. The factors influencing individual's career choice are not solely economic; they are complex and interrelated, being both personal and social in nature. The factors can be categorized as either external i.e., anticipated support from the social network and internal i.e., personal characteristics (Houser & Yoder, 1992). Whether an individual receives positive or negative support for their decision to pursue a career is often a position of sex-typed of that career or job. Ratio of men and women in a job in general has an effect on the kinds of job individual are likely to enter. General role stereotypes existing in our society often compels the women to seek traditional jobs such as of teacher, nurse and males usually cling to technological areas. The present research aimed at exploring the relationship between personality traits and gender role attitudes and to examine the differences in the personality traits and gender role attitudes of men and women working in traditional and nontraditional occupations. The present study was also committed to investigate the gender wise differences in personality traits and Gender Role Attitudes of different professionals working in traditional and non-traditional occupations. According to the given literature, seven domains were selected to measure the personality traits of the given sample, which are Dominance, sociability, capacity for status, self-acceptance, self-control, communality and flexibility. These variables were measured through the folk scales taken from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI, Gough, 1987). The other instrument, which was used to measure gender role attitudes of the sample, was Gender role Attitudes Scale (GRAS, Kamal & Saqib, 2004). Alpha reliability co-efficient computed for present sample showed that they are good at measuring what they are designed to. Alpha reliabilities of the folk scales were ranged from .58 to .88. Moreover, the findings also indicate a high reliability of .70 for the Gender Role Attitude Scale.
To meet the first objective of the study correlation between the sub scales of CPI and GRAS was calculated. The analysis results in a positive significant relationship between the all selected sub scales of CPI and Gender role attitude scale. The results indicate that personality dimension of dominance, sociability and flexibility as the most significantly correlated with the gender role attitude scale. It implies that individuals who are more assertive and task oriented are more inclined to practice modern gender role attitudes. Individuals who are more tasks oriented and confident of themselves are less influenced by the gender stereotypes and make evaluations based on abilities and performance irrespective of the gender. Moreover individuals who are more social and gregarious are more open and broadened in their relationships and tend to enjoy being with others. Conversely who are more introvert does not like to move out and feel uncomfortable with others especially in case of females who are more reserved and do not suggest to comply with the modern gender role attitudes. More over individuals who are more flexible and adaptable to changing environments are more changeable in assigning the roles. As flexible individuals can easily move along with the changing work force diversity and are more acceptable towards increased participation of women in various fields of life. In addition, the self-acceptance as being a more internal and a personal attribute may not affect the gender role attitudes as the other discussed previously. Furthermore the inter scale correlations for the selected seven dimensions of personality were found to be moderate to high ranging from .60 to .84. It means that all the individuals scoring high on one of these scales (dominant, sociability, Capacity for status, self-acceptance, self-control, communality and flexibility) tend to score higher on other selected scales as well. For example the scale of dominance correlates significantly high with the sociability at p<.01. It implies that individuals, who are dominant, task oriented, assertive and confident, are also friendly, outgoing and sociable. These results indicate that all the seven domains of CPI have a positive and significant relationship with each other. It reveals CPI and GRAS as reliable measures for our sample and can be used with the population in general for other research purpose as well.
In order to meet the objectives of the study, data was processed in a way to measure any existing differences in the personality traits of the targeted population. The result of the study shows significant differences in the selected personality dimension of CPI that are consistent with the previous findings. Several studies (e.g., Betz & Fitz Gerald, 1994;Siddiqa, 2004) found distinctive personality traits of individuals employed in traditional occupations and non-traditional occupations. Results of the present study also show significant mean differences between the two populations on the all selected sub scales of CPI. The results indicated that workforce in non-traditional occupations have more positive personality attributes as high scores on the given sub scales points to strengths of personality, these results are in line with previous studies (Gough, 1987). Even a very recent study also support the notion that individual's personality and career choice are interrelated and environment shape the attitudes and beliefs (Udoudoh, 2012). The findings of the study suggests that individuals in non-traditional occupations are more dominant, sociable, ambitious, self-accepting, self-controlled, integrated in society, creative and more masculine as compared to traditional ones. Evidence of the presence of these traits in non-traditional occupation suggest that as opting a non-traditional career is challenging and demanding and usually not encouraged in our society, require the given characteristics to get succeed and sustained in such careers. Moreover the non-traditional careers involves high competition, need more persistency, good management of social relationships and adaptation to the environment that give the opportunity to the individuals to enhance their characteristics and that explains the personality difference found in nontraditional occupations. For example, a female lawyer needs to be highly competent, influential and independent to succeed in her career as compared to a nurse in terms of both the nature of occupation and the counter competition of males as well. Research findings are also found to be in line with the present findings. Study conducted by Mazen & Lemkau (1990) reported feminity, communality, selfcontrol, status for capacity, and dominance as significant differentiating dimensions of personality with females showing positive attributes. Previous studies have reported that the male in these nontraditional jobs scored significantly higher on the personality dimensions of dominance, self-acceptance, sociability and communality. Moreover, ratio of males for non-traditional occupations is too low to be focused by the researchers as compared to females (Dodson & Borders, 2006).
The present research also studied the mean difference for traditional and nontraditional professionals with respect to Gender role Attitudes. Results of the study suggest significant mean differences between the two populations. High means at GRAS in case of non-traditional occupations means that nontraditional professionals have modern gender role attitudes as compared to individuals working in traditional occupations. The findings of the study are in consistent with other findings that suggests that women employed in male typical occupations are less gender role stereotyped (Ellerman Hohnstorn, Williomss and Mscullers, Moff & Betz as cited in Mazen & Lemaku, 1990). Moreover, personality dimensions were also subjected to study with respect to gender differences within traditional and nontraditional occupations. Results for traditional professionals indicate significant differences on all studied scales of CPI except the capacity for status. High score of females on the dominant scale suggests the traditional males are inclined to be more dominant as compared to traditional women professionals. As most of the people opt for traditional occupations, the patriarchal nature of our society presumes a dominant status of males that over ride all aspects of life. Moreover, females in traditional occupations reflect their conformity that such occupations are more suitable for females that are monotonous and provide limited opportunities to compete and increase their confidence. Significant high scores of females on the folk scales of self-acceptance, flexibility, communality and sociability points out those traditional women professional are more self-accepting, conforming, and friendly as compared to males in traditional occupations. As traditional males, professionals are more forceful; they tend to be less flexible and are less friendly. Females being more feminine tend to be more concerned in maintaining their social relationships and are friendly and outgoing. Results for gender differences in the personality traits among non-traditional professionals revealed females as scoring high on all the personality dimensions. The results indicate that females in nontraditional occupations are more dominant, self satisfied, emotionally stable, playful, social and adaptable to their environments as compared to males in nontraditional occupations. As the concept nontraditional is more associated with females and are more willing to join such occupations, they are more persistent in their attributes.
Moreover, the occupations that are considered nontraditional for females are more prestigious such as lawyers, pilots as compared to the occupations considered as nontraditional for males. Being less prestigious, low paid and less charming, decreases the motivation to strive and provide less opportunities to prosper that can affect the possible expression of personality traits. As far as gender differences among non-traditional professionals is concerned females were found to have higher mean values on all the concerned scales. The findings of the study witness that females in non-traditional occupations are more initiating and confident, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, realistic, broadened in their interest, self controlled, friendly as compared to males in non-traditional males. As Lemaku (1983) reported that women in male typical occupation occupations appeared to be high on competency traits resale to the masculine stereotypes. Mazen & Lemakau (1990) in their study reported high score achieved by females in nontraditional occupations on communality, dominance, capacity for status, self-control, capacity for status, sociability scales of CPI and lower score on feminity/masculinity dimensions of CPI. Gender differences with respect to gender role attitudes were also examined among the given sample. Mean difference, standard deviation and t values were computed to measure the differences. The results of the study revealed males and females as possessing different gender role attitudes. Females were found to be more modern in their gender role attitudes as compared to males in daily life we see that men in our society have more traditional views than women. In Pakistani society, gender role ideology that men should be breadwinner and women should be a housekeeper exists quiet obviously. It has been reported by different researches that males have more gender role attitudes as compared to females (Ahmad, 1999&Masood, 2004. Similarly, results of gender differences within the traditional and non-traditional professionals also show females as scoring high on nontraditional attitudes and scored less on traditional attitudes. The present study has varied implications in occupational Psychology particularly in Pakistani society where less attention has been paid to this area of research, further; due to male oriented traditional culture, choice of occupations particularly for females is very limited. The study has well established that personality traits may lead to better understanding of individuals' gender role attitudes. The findings also have implications in the field of social and gender Psychology and may help to break stereotypical social beliefs.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
The conclusion drawn from present study should be considered under some limitations. Firstly, study focused on some selected personality traits instead of considering all other traits as well, further, some other personality variables such as self-efficacy, or socialization process or organizational factors may also be considered important for future research. Secondly, the criteria for the selection of traditional and non-traditional professions was based on an indigenous study conducted by Siddiqa (2004), that may be needed revision or reevaluated. Thirdly, sample was taken from only Rawalpindi and Islamabad; in future research national data may be recruited to get a clearer picture. Further, a longitudinal data may also be best option to develop a causal predictive role of variables.