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The practice of public relations (PR) is shaped by the ‘life world’ of the professionals; moreover, both the experiences of the professionals and societal changes shape the profession in a particular area (Hodges, 2006). Women have always played an important part in the development of PR as a profession and academic field in Turkey. Since PR Association of Turkey was established in 1972, five out of eight presidents have been women, and most of the members are also female. Female PR practitioners represent 70% of the total workforce of PR sector in Turkey, and most of the communication agencies are led by female entrepreneurs.

However, research on women' positions and their multiple roles in PR in Turkey are limited.

This chapter uses a qualitative study with 27 in-depth one-on-one interviews conducted in order to analyse female PR practitioners' experiences related to (1) the start of their careers, (2) their career experiences, (3) their evaluation of the profession, and lastly (4) their career goals. The interviewees included agency owners, managers, deputy general managers and group directors.

The research aimed to discover the female PR professional experience in respect of the difficulties they face in their practice and everyday life, advantages and/or disadvantages of being a female PR professional in Turkey and the ways women balanced their career and family duties.

nvestigates whether career expectations of women in construction change once they begin working in the industry, in comparison to men. Focus group interviews and a literature review formed the basis for developing a survey questionnaire. The results revealed that professional women had higher expectations and were more committed to remaining in the construction industry than female students. Female students had significantly higher financial expectations than male students, while male students had significantly higher expectations in relation to the number of people they expect to supervise. Professional men were responsible for supervising significantly more people than professional women. The findings also suggest that there are fewer women in the construction industry over the age of 36 years, in comparison to men. It is recommended that this area of research should be developed further.

Expenditures on beauty, fitness and body shaping by females have increased significantly in recent years. Most previous studies examined this from the psychological perspective of self-acceptance and self-liking. However, this phenomenon may also have social implications. This study aims to provide a profound understanding of the social environment for female professionals as well as actionable insights for the government and social institutions.

A research model was developed based on impression management and social identity theories incorporating impression management motives, impression construction consumption and social identity. A survey study of 419 Chinese female professionals was conducted to test the research model.

This study surveyed 419 Chinese female professionals and found that impression management motives significantly drove female professionals to spend on their faces and bodies for impression construction, which in turn contributed to the enhancement of their social identities in three dimensions: relational identity, public identity and collective identity.

In a male-dominated society, it has become a norm that females should be cautious about their facial appearance and body shape. Females are often forced to consume to attain physical attractiveness and to construct a favorable social image. This study shows that consumption for impression construction has become a frequently used strategy for impression management and identifies key areas of societal concern.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of age and gender upon the level of job satisfaction of accounting professionals as well as examine if gender and age lead to differences in their perceptions of work‐related attributes such as advancement opportunities and relations with supervisors.

Questionnaires were mailed to 1,000 accounting professionals and 245 useable questionnaires were received (193 were returned due to incorrect address) resulting in a 30 percent response rate. The questionnaire was designed with a six‐point Likert scale to measure the respondent perceptions concerning 78 factors that may influence their level of job satisfaction. Factor analysis with a varimax rotation reduced the 78 factors down to nine factor groups. These factors or work‐related attributes became the nine independent variables for six regression models. The sample was subdivided based by age and gender differently for each of the six regression models. The dependent variable represented the level of job satisfaction perceived by the accounting professionals surveyed.

As a result of the six regression models, the six following factors or work‐related attributes are significant to age and/or gender: job fulfillment, treatment by peers and supervisors, promotion and advancement opportunities, supervisors, gender discrimination and employee relations with coworkers. The remaining three factors or work‐related attributes are not significant with age and/or gender: amount of compensation, fringe benefits provided and amount of workload required.

The sample includes alumni from a private university located in a large metropolitan area on the east coast of the USA, the results are not representative of all accounting professionals. Thus, our findings cannot be generalized to the larger population of American accounting professionals.

Employers can incorporate the findings of this study in their organizations to assist in improving the overall level of job satisfaction of their accounting professional employees, especially involving gender or age issues.

This study shows boards of directors and executive managers which specific work‐related attributes to improve for the purpose of increasing the retention rate and decreasing turnover rate of their accounting professionals in critical positions within those organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to study the style design methods of professional female vests that meet the emotional needs of consumers.

Using the theory of kansei engineering as a guide to screen representative samples of female professional vests and relevant emotional vocabularies of styles, through morphological analysis, style design elements of female professional vests are extracted, the fifth-order semantic difference questionnaire was used to establish the perceptual assessment matrix for design elements, the correlation analysis method and multiple linear regression analysis were used to analyze the results of the perceptual evaluation of the sample, find out the relationship between the perceptual vocabulary and design elements of professional female vest styles, and establish a regression model, finally, it is verified by random samples of the market, so as to guide the development of new products.

The seven design elements extracted from professional female vest styles have an impact on consumer perception, by using a linear analysis method, the correspondence between perceptual perception of consumers and style design elements can be quantified and a model can be established to accurately predict consumers’ perceptual intentions.

The application of perceptual engineering in the style design of professional female vests provides a new idea for the design of clothing styles. It helps garment companies and designers to determine the development direction of professional woman’s vest styles, while the research results provide design reference for other products.

The purpose of this study is to examine the importance of human capital and professional networks for women’s and men’s appointment to the boards of directors of public companies. The study provides an in-depth analysis of how human capital and professional networks contribute to women’s as compared with men’s odds of corporate board membership.

The study analyzes the human capital and professional networks of 494 male and female corporate outside (non-executive) directors appointed between 2005 and 2010 to the boards of US public companies listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Human capital was measured as director age, education and professional experience (function and role). Professional network variables measured included composition of professional network, network centrality, constraint and cohesion.

The study’s findings reveal that the characteristics that impact the appointment of women as outside directors to public company boards differ from those of men. Relative to men, certain professions such as government relations and education improve the odds of appointment of women to corporate boards, while age lowers women’s odds. The number of network ties and the degree of network cohesion were also significant in predicting the likelihood of female board appointment to public corporations relative to men’s odds. The final model was able to predict female board membership correctly only in 28 per cent of the cases, while male board membership was predicted in 89 per cent of the cases, suggesting that factors other than human capital and professional networks (e.g. their gender) impact women’s appointment to corporate boards.

To the authors ' knowledge, this study is the first to comprehensively examine the professional network components of female and male directors along with their human capital in the analysis of their prospects for board appointment. The conceptualization of professional networks as well the depth of quantitative analysis of the network components of the study advance the extant literature on the composition of corporate boards.

This paper aims to explore the extent of use of social media by Pakistani female librarians for professional development and their perception of its usefulness. The paper also attempts to find out social characteristics that influence the use of social media among female librarians for career and professional development (PD).

Data were collected through an online survey (using self-administered structured questionnaire) from 102 female librarians in Pakistan regarding usage frequency, perception, choice of librarianship as a profession and perceived benefits of social media. The list of participants was obtained from the Directory of Pakistani Library Professionals compiled by Sada-e-Librarian (a non-profit LIS professional organization). Data collections also include online interviews through Facebook chat with 20 key informants selected from the participants of the questionnaire survey.

The study reveals that the majority of Pakistani female librarians is well aware of social media and uses it frequently. They are found to make extensive use of social media for PD and perceive social media as a useful tool for PD. However, social media is judged to be less helpful in acquiring technical skills. The study found a number of factors affecting the use of social media for PD among female librarians in Pakistan. These factors include social characteristics such as privacy, parent’s years of schooling, marital status and family support.

This study is among the first attempts to discover social characteristics, the use of social media and its relationship with PD among female librarians in Pakistan.

This national study of 540 executives in the health industry was designed to examine organizational factors which influenced participation of male and female executives in their professional associations. Instrumental and expressive factors which influenced association membership were also analyzed by gender to assess preferences for specific membership benefits.

Survey methodology was used in this study with questionnaires mailed to 1,680 executives in the US resulting in a response rate of 32.1 percent. Dreher and Ash's mentoring scale was used to analyze preference for specific instrumental and expressive benefits.

Dues posed an organizational barrier to participation in a professional association for female executives. Gender differences also influenced the type of instrumental and expressive benefits desired by executives.

Future studies should explore multiple association relationships to assess if there are structural or professional factors which contribute to particular network constellations.

Few studies focused on organizational barriers or key benefits that may affect participation in professional associations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how early career professionals “do gender” in their new professional context. Specifically, it explores how two groups of graduates, psychologists and political scientists, “do gender” as early career professionals with a particular emphasis on how they acquire legitimacy in relation to their colleagues and clients.

Drawing on a qualitative research methodology, graduates from two Master's programmes in Sweden were interviewed after 30‐34 months of professional work. Analysis of the interview data is located within a “doing gender” perspective with special reference to Acker's conception of employment and organizations as gendered processes influencing individual action.

The paper identifies two different ways in which participants “do gender” in their professional practice in order to acquire legitimacy: “self‐presentation” and “strategy”. This finding suggests that female and male early career professionals acquire different kinds of legitimacy, which could, in turn, be derived from the gendered processes that exist in contemporary organizations. The paper will also report that when they “do gender” participants also produce and reproduce a gendered notion of a professional project that influences their subsequent professional practice as well as how they position themselves as knowledgeable and competent.

The perspective of “doing gender” contributes an alternative understanding of graduate employment and the encounter with working life. It especially enables us to capture gender as an important influence on individual action in the organizational context.

The authors collected data from 295 randomly selected employees, four months after the company’s first labor union certification election. Results of separate multiple regression analyses suggested that job security, extrinsic job satisfaction, and organization‐based self‐esteem (OBSE) were predictors of organizational instrumentality for both males and females. For men, the division where they work, low desire to change, and low consideration were related to their organizational instrumentality, whereas for women, low income, the Japanese management style, and the Protestant Work Ethic were related to their organizational instrumentality. Non‐professional men had a stronger belief that money represents their achievement than professional men. Professional women had a stronger interest in intrinsic job satisfaction than non‐professional women. Both male and female professionals valued Japanese management style. Results are discussed in light of managers’ efforts in satisfying employees’ needs and union leaders’ efforts in organizing their targets.