Relationship between College Women's Occupational Interests and a Single-Sex Environment.

This study investigated whether the gender composition of the home and high-school environment in which a woman was reared has an influence upon her occupational interests. Results indicated that college women who reported attending a single-sex high school and who also had brothers demonstrated interest in non-traditional careers significantly more often than did their counterparts who attended coed schools. Those women from single-sex high schools reporting having sisters only did not differ significantly from the other three groups. These results were interpreted as being useful in explaining some of the discrepant findings in the previous literature concerning the overall effect of single-sex secondary education.