monocultural perspective. Although recognition of the importance
of multiculturalism is on the rise, they note that the multicultural
mind-set is not the dominant frame of reference in many disciplines
and professional practices. Their point is important. It suggests that
cultures change, continually providing different affordances and
constraints for career. We also have to recognize that the affor-
dances and constraints of a culture are confined neither to ethnic-
ity nor to the ethnic dimension of a multicultural society.
What, then, is the intercultural validity of our contextual expla-
nation of career? Collin (2000) recognizes that careeritself is a term
that is loaded with cultural specificity. It has been tied in significant
ways to the individualism, capitalism, and bureaucratic organization
that flourished in midcentury America. In the explanation offered
in this chapter, we attempt to pull “career” away from the specific
occupational, organizational, and economic factors that encapsu-
lated it at one time. We recognize, however, that the specifics of
career (for instance, career practices such as counseling), like the
specifics of action, are always tied to specific times and places. They
are culturally specific, which is not to say that career and counseling
cannot be used in a range of cultural contexts. They are. But in each
case, they adapt to the specific cultural context. Not only is it not
possible to extricate ourselves from the cultural specificity of career,
it is the strength of our explanation. However, when discussing the
cross-cultural validity of this explanation, one needs to recognize
that we are proposing an explanation that helps in collecting and
understanding ecologically valid data at both the research and prac-
tice levels. Unlike traditional science, we have not proposed a the-
ory based on causal propositions that are assumed to be universal but
are challenged to prove their validity in different contexts.
Gender and Career
Career is a gendered construct, that is, gender is inextricably inter-
woven into the structure, functions, and social meaning of career.
The efforts of many feminists working in the career field have been
to have the gender properties of career explicitly recognized rather
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