Equity Tips for Counseling and Advocacy 

Expanding Students' Options 

• Encourage all students to make academic and career decisions on the basis of their individual abilities, interests, and values rather than their gender. 
• Encourage students to pursue a career of interest to them even though the people in the field are primarily of the other gender. 
• Encourage all students to take three to four years of high school math and science in order to be better prepared for the technological and skilled trade careers. 
• Use nontraditional role models-- both women and men for career days, mentoring, shadowing, or group guidance classes. 
• Discuss the impact of career choice on wages.
  
• Discuss the ways stereotypes affect perceptions of careers. 
• Meet regularly with students who are nontraditional in a career and technical education program to support them and to discuss problems that may arise. 
• Provide realistic information about the changing roles of both female and male workers in the paid workforce. 
• Recognize barriers that young men and women face in response to socialization processes and pressures when they work in nontraditional jobs. 
• Provide students who are about to enter the workforce with information about their employment rights and discrimination laws.  

Use of Materials

• Review all counseling and testing materials for sources of gender bias and stereotyping- modify or purge as appropriate. 
• Find and make available in your office area materials on nontraditional career fields. 
• Find, summarize and forward to faculty information on the changing roles of women and men in our society and the changing nature of the workforce. 
• Coordinate bulletin boards and displays portraying pictures of women and men working at a variety of jobs, including nontraditional occupations.

Equity Advocacy

• Encourage school administration to provide new and earlier opportunities for students to explore nontraditional options at elementary and junior high levels using Pennsylvania's Academic Standards for Career Education and Work.    
• Meet with faculty of nontraditional students to discuss the importance of their role in recruitment and retention. 
• Review economic, social and/or demographic trends that may affect students' career choices and options. 
• Develop a comprehensive sexual harassment training program for school staff, students, and employers.
• Attempt to educate parents on an on-going basis about the need for expanded career options and preparation for home and work realities for both men and women. 
• Act as an equity advocate in the community, supporting academic and career decisions based on interests, and values rather than gender.