Role Salience and Multiple Roles: A Gender Perspective

This article describes Super's construct of role salience, and recent literature on gender issues in multiple roles that supports the wisdom of his basic ideas. Gender influences how individuals perceive various roles, role priorities and involvements over time, and role juggling during adulthood. Whether or not men and women report key roles as similarly salient; how they define, enact, and manage these roles may differ substantially. Personal variations in life careers remind counselors to explore clients' own life meanings as expressed in roles.