Journal of Vocational Behavior 88 (2015) 195204

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Journal of Vocational Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb

Narrating career, positioning identity and constructing gender

in an Italian adolescent's personal narratives
Maria Chiara Pizzorno a,, Angelo Benozzo a, Neil Carey b
a
b

Universit della Valle d'Aosta (University of Valle d'Aosta), Dipartimento di Scienze Umane Strada Cappuccini 2 A, 11100 Aosta, Italy
Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Health, Psychology & Social Care, Birley Building Bonsall Street, Manchester M15 6GX, UK

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 29 December 2014
Available online 11 March 2015
Keywords:
Agency
Career narrative
Discourse
Gender
Identity
Performativity

a b s t r a c t
This article explores identity career narratives as a gendered and gendering discourse. The gender
differences approach to career development conceives of gender as a dichotomous and xed
variable inuencing various aspects of career. In contrast to this mainstream approach, the
paper adopts a post-structural view and reads identity and gender in terms of performativity,
that is to say, constituted through the productive power of discourses. Through a detailed analysis
of a text written by Giada, an adolescent involved in a career counseling project in Italy, we
analyze how her career narratives implicate and constitute gender in their telling. In particular,
we present the discourses that frame Giada's career narrative and we highlight how these
discourses position Giada as a woman and as female. These discourses can be read as regulatory
discourses: shaping and reecting particular understandings of gender. However, we also
highlight Giada's agency in questioning the regulatory practice of such discourses through linguistic acts. In the conclusions, we further explore the potential implications of these research ndings
for a rethinking of career counseling research and practice.
2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Socio-constructionism has made a signicant contribution to the critical analysis of the dominant discourses in career theories that
lay bare issues of power and ideology in the career eld (Young & Collin, 2004). Nonetheless, the gender discourse that pervades the
literature on career development and career construction remains, de facto, unchallenged. Even today almost all studies concerning
the link between career development and gender are based on the gender differences approach. This approach conceptualizes
gender as a variable expressed in dichotomous terms and one that remains xed over time, that inuences, whether directly or
indirectly, different aspects of career development: expectations and aspirations, self-efcacy, parental support etc. (e.g. Hardin,
Varghese, Tran, & Carlson, 2006; Inda, Rodrguez, & Pea, 2013; Perry, Przybysz, & Al-Sheikh, 2009). The literature on family inuence
on career development, for example, is largely based on this approach (Whiston & Keller, 2004).
What, however, is almost never illustrated clearly in these studies, even when they investigate gender differences as the express
purpose of the research, is what is understood by gender what is being discussed when the discussion is about male and
female, women or men and what the underlying theory on gender is. Unfortunately, however, these studies, in omitting a
theoretical denition of gender, or in taking one as read, tend to reify gender as a real thing and to reinforce the essentialist and
biological discourse about gender. In contrast to the gender differences approach, our study assumes a post-structuralist theoretical
stance in which gender is produced in and through the language and discourse practices that constitute it (Benozzo, Pizzorno, Bell,
& Koro-Ljungberg, 2015; Butler, 1990, 1993; Ford, 2006; Pascoe, 2005; Rasmussen, 2006; Ringrose & Renold, 2010; Youdell, 2005).
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: m.pizzorno@univda.it (M.C. Pizzorno), a.benozzo@univda.it (A. Benozzo), n.carey@mmu.ac.uk (N. Carey).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2015.03.002
0001-8791/ 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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M.C. Pizzorno et al. / Journal of Vocational Behavior 88 (2015) 195204

Another problem with gender differences studies in career development is their explanations. Gender differences in career
outcomes for example, the so-called educational and occupational gender gaps are attributed to gender differences in career
processes during childhood or adolescence (showing, for instance, how parental expectations differently affect males and females)
and the phenomenon is sometimes explained as males and females being differently affected by socialization and cultural beliefs
about gender (Ashby & Schoon, 2010; Gutman & Schoon, 2012).
Career gender differences are therefore explained through gender differences enacted in the past and in the broader social and
cultural context without assuming a clear psychosocial theory such as social-role theory or stereotype theory (Diekman & Eagly,
2000; Eagly, 1987), or feminist and gender theory (Butler, 1990, 1993). Gender and post-structuralist theories have been used, in
contrast, in the study of work settings and in studies that critically explore the nature and constitution of professional/occupational
identities (Barry, Berg, & Chandler, 2006; Ford, 2006; Linstead & Thomas, 2002). The lack of research adopting a post-structuralist
perspective in the eld of career construction, highlights one of the innovative features of the present study.
Neglecting a strong conceptualization of gender, researchers in career construction, as discourse users, continue to reinforce the
gender differences discourse and to construct evidence in favor of a deterministic thesis, according to which, pre-existing gender
differences, in some measure, produce different careers. This dominant discourse hinders the emergence of alternative discourses:
and what if gender differences were a sort of retroactive effect of career discourses? And what if, instead of reiterating that men
and women choose different careers, we began to say that individuals repeat career discourses and practices that convince and
reassure them in their differentness?
A further aspect that should not be underestimated is how far gender discourses also permeate individuals' career narratives. The
importance of discourses, including those of gender, in the shaping of identity and career narratives has been acknowledged by Kirsi
LaPointe (2010): Career narratives also draw on professional discourses or other social discourses with associated identity
positions and categorizations such as gender, family relations, and special interests (p. 3). Also Reid and West (2011a), on the subject
of the stories that people tell, have asserted that these: can reect dominant narratives in the wider culture rather than simply the
voice of clients The stories we all tell about ourselves and our perception of the world cannot be separated from the powerful
discourses that form the background to our lives (p. 176).
However, we wish to highlight the fact that many discourses have become dominant thanks to science: much power is
conferred to discourses through the scienticness of academic lines of argument that, for instance, in relation to gender identity,
have legitimated inequalities and pathologization. For these reasons our work accepts the challenge laid down by Young and Collin
(2004) for an integration of strong conceptualization and data-based research in order to re-frame the canon of traditional gender
discourses, in career theory and practice.
Taking our cue from these positions, the aim of this paper is twofold. In the rst instance, we intend to offer a strong
conceptualization of identity and gender from the post-structuralist perspective and to investigate, through a data-based research,
what gender discourses were used by Giada, an adolescent involved in an intervention of narrative career counseling in Italy, in
the construction of her career narratives. Secondly, we intend to question the traditional and dominant discourse of gender
differences in explaining career constructions of young people, by offering an alternative way in which the career narratives of
young people might be understood and reected upon.
The paper is structured as follows. In the rst part we set out our theoretical position on identity and gender based on poststructural theory through which we subsequently re-examine the role of career narratives in reinforcing particular understandings
of gender. There follows a presentation of how we collected Giada's texts with a description of the methodology and the data analysis
using a critical discourse analytic approach (Parker, 2005, 2013). Giada's written narratives reveal how in writing about her career
choices, aspirations, interests and dreams she was simultaneously and signicantly using discourses that enact gender: reproducing the seemingly gendered and gendering nature of careers and professional identities. In our conclusions we consider the
most important contributions to emerge from the study and their implications for career counseling research and practice.
2. Theoretical framework: identity, gender and discourses
In what ways might the career narratives of adolescents simultaneously position broader questions of gender identity?
Specically, how was Giada gendered and doing gender in and through career narratives? These are the questions that have oriented
our study, the starting point of which is a sound theorization of identity and gender from a post-structuralist perspective.
In the last few decades the psychological, human and social sciences have registered increasingly stronger attention toward
identity, toward the project of the construction of self, toward the sense and meaning of the question: Who am I? Who are we?.
These are questions and concepts that have a long tradition think, for example, of the foundational works of Mead and Goffman
on identity formation and that have lately witnessed a proliferation of studies in many disciplines: philosophy, psychology,
anthropology, social sciences and cultural studies.
In general terms, one can identify two main branches of studies on identity (Ford, 2006; Roseneil & Seumour, 1999): the
constructivist one and, latterly, the post-structuralist one. In the rst, identity is connected to the processes of constructing a sense
and knowledge of self. It represents the construction of identity structures that can support the individual as s/he faces the difculties
of (social) life; a sort of anchorage providing safety that constructs and reconstructs itself an ongoing process through the narrative
of individual biography. The self is a reexive project in Giddens' (1991, p. 75) terms, we are not what we are but what we make of
ourselves, a narrative process of self-making (Guichard, 2009).
In the sphere of studies on career construction (Guichard, 2005, 2009; Savickas, 2002, 2005) identity is conceptualized, in the light
of these same constructivist theories, as narrative identity: an internalized and evolving life story (McAdams, 2011) or a collection of

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197

stories about the self in a particular social role or context, such as education or career (Savickas, 2011). Career stories constitute a
primary source for identity (Meijers & Lengelle, 2012). From the viewpoint of career counseling practice, this theoretical approach
has encouraged the use of narrative methods (McMahon & Watson, 2012, 2013; Meijers & Lengelle, 2012; Reid & West, 2011a,b),
as has been the case in numerous professional communities of practice, such as psychotherapy, family counseling, medicine,
education, and health. The career counseling intervention that permitted Giada's texts to be collected was based on this same
narrative method.
As an alternative to the constructivist branch, there exists another theoretical approach to the subject of identity the poststructuralist approach which represents the reference point for the present work and that problematizes the idea of identity and
the categories associated with it. The initial question Me, who am I?, to which the life story should seek to reply, is reformulated
in a post-structuralist light to: By what am I constituted? By what discourses and discursive practices?
This approach problematizes and deconstructs the processes of construction and constitution of identity and of gender or those
other identity categories (for example race and sexuality) that are held as important in constructing a sense of self. Poststructuralism distances itself from the philosophical position of western humanism that supports the idea of an essential, unique
and coherent core of the individual (Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1990). The idea of an essential and coherent self is replaced by that of
multiples selves (Hall, 1996), a fragmented subject (Hjgaard & Sndergaard, 2011) that is constituted through/by the productive
power of language and discursive practices.
Language constitutes material objects and social practices as meaningful and intelligible, it structures which meanings can or
cannot be deployed under determinate circumstances by speaking subjects (Barker & Galasinski, 2001, p. 12). That is to say, the
meanings through which the world and the self are made knowable and known are imputed through discourse (Youdell,
2003, p. 6). The approach most generally adopted in post-structuralist accounts of identity views it as a function of those discourses
that frame the development of a sense of identity. In this, Discourses, which after Foucault refer to language and practices, are
regulated ways of speaking about a topic that delimit the sayable and unsayable (Barker & Galasinski, 2001, p. 2).
The analysis of Giada's narratives, presented in the following pages, takes as another cue Butler's (1990, 1993, 1997, 2004) studies
on performativity of identity and gender. Butler, taking as her starting point the works of Foucault (1990), Austin (1962) and Derrida
(1967), has elaborated the notion of performativity as that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names (Butler,
1993, p. 130). Fundamentally, the language and discourses that claim merely to describe a subject and gender, in reality produce
them or constitute them. For Butler identity and gender are constituted through discourses and in language that is performative,
because a performative functions to produce that which it declares (Butler, 1993, p. 107).
The theory of performativity has been employed by Butler to analyze gender. According to Butler, gender is constituted in
interactions through a set of repeated acts within a rigid regulatory frame that congeal overtime to produce the appearance of
substance, of a natural sort of being (Butler, 1990, p. 33). In this theoretical frame gender identity is something that we do (rather
than something we are, we acquire or we possess) and requires a constant repetition of acts. Identity and gender are performatively
enacted through language and discursive practice, all of which cite discursive practices that have been previously sedimented, thus
placing the subject within existing relations of power. For example, an adolescent, who was part of the wider study from which
Giada's narrative is excerpted, wrote in his career narrative: a boy had an enduring dream: to become a professional volleyball player.
When he told his father, the latter responded that volleyball is a sport for girls. In this interaction, identity is being constituted and, in
parallel this adolescent is:
1. Using citational practices in citing discourses (about sport and gender) that pre-exist his subjectivity;
2. Inscribing identity within the existing category of gender, which is in parallel a system of power (the categories are binaried and
arranged hierarchically). A binary system creates a false opposition and a position of privilege for one of the two polarities that
is, consequently, played off against the other (Linstead & Pullen, 2006);
3. Constituting an oppositional identity position (that of the female) that completes the binaried category. This identity position may
remain silent in such narratives, not moving from the background, but it is always present even in its silence in the binary pair.
This is what Derrida (1967) called the absent presence.
For post-structuralists the constitutive power of discourses is a foundational element, whereby identity (and gender as a category
of identity) is conditioned by normative discourses (Butler, 1990, 1997) that authorize what can and cannot be said; they produce
relations of power and communities of consent and dissent, and thus discursive boundaries are always being redrawn around what
constitutes the desirable and undesirable and around what it is that makes possible particular structures of intelligibility and
unintelligibility (Britzman, 2000, p. 36). Discourses, that is, render the subject intelligible and legitimate; they offer the subject
positions that can be legitimately assumed within social contexts. Here another idea that is central to the approach we adopt in our
analysis comes into play that of positioning (Harr & Moghaddam, 2013). The positioning of a subject (for example in our case
Giada who is writing a narrative and positions herself as a secretary) assigns rights and duties, denes the obligations that an
adolescent has toward other subjects and, vice versa, those the latter has toward the former. Positioning denes, then, a normative
system (Harr & Moghaddam, 2013), building simultaneously that system of relations of power between the subject and those
other subjects who lend form to the social context in which the subject is located.
The positions available to the subject are often limited, and in gender discursive practices positions are constrained within a binary
system that seems to reect immutable and natural categories. However, other positions are made accessible to the subject: for
instance, we will see how Giada avoids gender categories and positions herself as a person. In the same way, discourses are never
xed and stable to quote Foucault (1990), they are superimposed and contradictory. Since no disciplinary discourse is xed, forever

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static and immutable, all regulatory systems are vulnerable to the possibilities of agency (Butler, 1990, 1997), in the form of disruption, resistance and subversion.
According to Butler's theory, however, subject agency is always riven with paradox (Butler, 2004). Agency, in Butler's terms, is not
the capacity to choose freely one's own identity and gender, rather, it is more like a capacity for improvisation within a scene of
constraint (Meagher, 2007). What can be subverted is not identity itself which is largely xed and disciplined by discourses
but the regulatory practice of discourses (Chambers, 2007). The subject constituted in and through regulatory discourses, possesses,
nonetheless, what Butler calls linguistic or discursive agency. Through our analysis of Giada's texts we bear witness to some of the ways
in which Giada formulates this (linguistic) agency by questioning and disturbing the regulatory practice of gender discourses, while,
paradoxically, repeating them.
Before proceeding with the description of the methods used to gather and analyze Giada's texts, one premise is important to
complete our theoretical framework. Adopting a post-structuralist perspective and a discursive analytical approach also means that
in these pages we do not intend to examine what Giada really thinks or really wants [to say] so that we reduce the things that are
said [and written] to what . . . [she] really mean[s] (Parker, 2005, p. 101) she tells what she writes. What counts for us, as researchers
in career eld, is not whether career accounts are real, but how they are made real by rhetorical and citational processes, and how
inequalities are made real by the repetition of powerful discourses in career narratives. For a career counselor, moreover, it is useful
to examine how subjectivity is constituted in career accounts, without the need to seek a true story concealing a true and agentic self,
but by reading subjectivity as a continual tension between the power that enables it and the efforts to exceed that power (Butler,
1997), not underplaying, then, the scene of constraint in which the subject writes or recounts.
3. Collecting and analyzing Giada's written career narratives
Giada's written texts were gathered during a narrative career counseling project carried out in Italy in 20122013, entitled
Dedalus Less dropping out, more employment. Innovating school guidance, and funded by the European Interregional Program
ItalySwitzerland. The project was aimed at preventing early school leaving by supporting the youngsters, 14-year-olds, during the
critical transition from lower to upper secondary school. Students were involved in telling stories about their career plans at a difcult
moment in their lives when educational choice can greatly affect their future. In Italy, in fact, the educational system obliges students
to make a critical career choice during the transition from lower to upper secondary school. That is, at around 14 years of age, young
people are required to make a choice between an academic track and vocational training.
During the project, an interdisciplinary approach to narrative career counseling was experimented with by engaging professional
storytellers (novelists, lm makers, scriptwriters) to work with the students alongside career counselors. The narrative method
adopted was that of storytelling, understood as using stories to elicit individuals' stories that can be shared. The method was similar
to that implemented by Lengelle and Meijers (2013) in the Writing the Self and Narrative Possibilities courses based on structured
exercises of ction, poetry and dialogues.
The intervention was performed with classes of students and articulated in sessions focused on different topics (family background, vocational dreams, skills and talents etc.). To engage adolescents in writing their own stories, short novels and fairy tales
were read, students watched movie scenes, or listened to songs: stimuli selected in accordance with the session topic and goal. The
adolescents were invited to write about themselves: to compose and sing a rap, to stage simple performances, to perform an interview
with the camera. This kind of approach generated narratives, written or video-recorded, that always related to career and education.
Below we present and analyze the texts written during the intervention by Giada, a pseudonym. As the adolescent was 14 years old,
her parents were provided with an information sheet and signed a consent form agreeing to the student's participation in the study.
To analyze Giada's narratives, we drew on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Parker, 2005, 2013) which focuses on the use of
language and how that language use is itself framed in/by the regulatory power of discourses operating at the macro, sociopolitical level because: [a]t the same time as we actively form sentences and turns in a conversation, we also have to use words
and phrases that carry meanings we cannot entirely control (Parker, 2005, p. 89). Similarly, Benwell and Stokoe (2006) characterize
CDA as an approach that attempts to forge links between micro and macro contexts (p. 44) in which texts occur. In particular,
our points of reference are the works of Parker which highlight some of the key ideas (Parker, 2005) of CDA, using these to inform and
guide our analysis of the texts written by Giada. Parker outlines these key ideas as distinct, but argues that analysis of texts is neither
linear nor strictly programmatic. As such, these focus points (outlined below) provide the basis of our analysis and thus informed our
interpretation of the texts written by Giada.
If it is true that the subject is constituted through language and discursive practices, then CDA requires the researcher to pay special
attention to become extremely sensitive to the words and forms of language used by the speaking subject. One key element of CDA
is the multivoicedness of language; that is a sensitivity to how the subject self-denes through terms that echo synonyms or antonyms.
For example the use of the expression I m a girl obliges s/he who self-denes as such to adapt to that category and, at the same time,
to self-differentiate from the other polarity of the gender category. The idea is that, through an analysis of the language, one can
identify the discursive dynamics (in what is said and/or left unspoken) that inhabit a narrative and give expression to the extant
contradictions that permeate such narratives.
A second key element of CDA has to do with the identication and explication of discourses in operation within (and across) texts.
The language with which the text is constructed are tied to discourses that are present and circulate in the wider social (cultural and
political) contexts within which they occur. CDA encourages researchers to look beyond what, on the surface, is the seemingly
ordinariness and naturalness of research participants' narratives by locating and describing their discursive constructions within
the broader linguistic and social landscapes in which participants make sense of their worlds. However, according to most forms of

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199

CDA and much critical qualitative research practice the very discursive formations that color the social landscape and that convey
and produce meanings for research participants, are equally in operation for researchers. In this particular context, the discursive
formations and structures that relate to the social world of Giada are also those of our own, as well as to those of any independent
readings of such linguistic markers. As such, in the same way that we (re)interpret Giada's stories of career aspiration to highlight
the construction and constitution of gender, our own readings are subject to further (re)interpretation. In essence, there is no
real/nal truth to be garnered from such texts.
Following the identication of particular discourses in narratives, CDA suggests that we should identify Giada's positioning
(the structure of obligations and duties in which her narratives place her) associated with those discourses and, at the same time,
to look at power and resistance in discourse [for] illuminating how language keeps certain power relations in place or challenges
them (Parker, 2005, p. 90). From the point of view of gender, that means, for example, understanding how discourses and language
produce gender in binary terms (man/woman), which asymmetries are inscribed in the dichotomous category and, how they specify
what career pathways seem legitimate and appropriate for a gendered identity. At the same time this exploration of positioning
equates to an inquiry into which relations of power are operating in and through texts. Did Giada's description of self leave intact
or question the structures of power (the gender categories) with which she putatively produced her own gender? This step was
also necessary to critically acknowledge and unpack the question of agency (Butler, 1997); to understand how the subject, while constituted by discourses, can, at the same time, contribute to changing them through challenge and resistance.
Lastly, a further focus on Parker's version of CDA, encourages the researcher to reect on the fact that texts (e.g. written or spoken
language) are inextricably related to other texts both contemporary and historical. It is in paying attention to the inter-textual
nature of language that the researcher can offer interpretations on how language in a text is tied to larger discourses functioning
ideologically. Parker (2005) highlights how we might treat the language of texts as manifestations of discourses that entail the
organization of language into certain kinds of social bond, and each bond includes certain kinds of people and excludes others
(p. 90, emphasis in the original). It is in this way that discourses can be said to function as ideological structures, operating to create
inclusions and exclusions, dening what is normal and thus accepted and legitimated and, concomitantly, what is considered deviant
and abnormal. Gender is a particularly potent category in dening normality and in creating both connection and exclusion because it
constructs itself in discursive moves of contrast and opposition. So, positioning oneself through language as belonging to the female
gender, woman/girl, automatically marks one as not belonging to the male gender, man/boy. In creating such connections and ties,
discourses also create boundaries and separations, in essence, once more, relations of power. Paying careful attention to these aspects,
we performed an analysis of Giada's narrative as illustrated below. Before presenting our ndings, a nal observation is important. We
agree with Parker (1999, 2005) that, even in his attempts to dene a series of steps by which one might perform a CDA, he is also
extremely skeptical of conceiving of CDA as a discourse analysis machine through which the researcher can perform her/his analysis
in a mechanical and linear way (p. 92). This skepticism is reected in wider debates in the literature (Antaki, Billig, Edwards & Potter,
2003; Burman, 2004) on discourse analysis more generally which question what makes a good analysis. We would like to remind the
reader that any analysis (discursive or otherwise) has to be undertaken in relation to a declared set of theoretical presuppositions as
well as specic questions generated in relation to these (Burman, 2004, p. 3). It is on the basis of these key ideas that we proceeded in
our analysis of Giada's texts. We hope that it makes for enjoyable reading but that it also demonstrates the key thesis of the paper that
gender is performed in and through the language available to and adopted by the speaking subject.

4. Findings: Giada's gendered career narrative

Below we present our analysis of a selection of texts written by Giada, a Caucasian adolescent in her nal year of upper high school
in a middle-income area. Through an analysis of these fragments of her writings that are most relevant to our lines of argument, we
identify three discourses relevant to the gendering of identity [1) the gendered disposition discourse; 2) the gendered (secretary)
discourse; 3) the gendered (dancer) discourse] that we illustrate below.

4.1. The gendered disposition discourse

In her rst text Giada presents herself as follows:
I consider myself to be a well brought up person who faces life with courage. [] One thing that is a real pleasure to me is going
and babysitting my cousin, it's something that makes me happy [] My favorite sport is dance, I've been doing it for a whole
eight years now and I think that it makes me a well-rounded individual, and through it I can express myself and my qualities.
One sport, on the other hand that I just hate is soccer, because I think that they're dumb, you know, the ones who all chase after
the ball, but that's just my opinion.
In these few lines, Giada constitutes herself as a well-brought up person who practices dance, a sport that has enthused her for
many years. The story about dance is, indeed, one of the leitmotivs of her gendered career narrative that will recur in almost all her
texts. In these rst comments, however, the career narrative is constructed on the basis of two intertwined discourses: dispositions
and gender. The disposition discourse, that has been a dominant discourse in career theory, is based on the notion of matching
internal traits to occupational characteristics with traits remaining the same in different contexts and over time. The underpinning
concept is the essentialist view of the Self, with its own personality traits and vocational interests (Young & Collin, 2014).

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This disposition discourse presents itself when Giada writes that through it [dance] I can express myself and my qualities; this phrase
presupposes a self, pre-existing the subject, endowed with a collection of traits my qualities that may express themselves if called
upon in school, sporting, organizational, or recreational settings. In other words, a sporting activity or a job is the context in which
the subject can identify and express those predispositions so as to achieve the complete realization of her/his realized/complete
(well-rounded) self. We must acknowledge, however, that the autobiographical story device in the career counseling project, may
have contributed to creating the idea of a pre-existing self that is capable of fullling a dream of self-determination.
The disposition discourse has always been interwoven with a gender discourse, and gender differences in vocational interests have
been addressed by many studies that have legitimated the discourse that women have greater aptitudes in the social sphere, and that
serving others is a central factor in the lives of women (Miller, 1986). A gender differences approach to vocational interests is again
based on the belief of a true essence, on a self who already is, and, as such, is conrmed as either woman or man (Rusmussen, 2006).
Here Giada constructs herself as woman with gender-typical interests, like babysitting, which affords Giada the feeling of
real pleasure, and dance, a sport that in Italy traditionally has female connotations and that provides the opportunity for her to
give expression to her true nature. Giada seems to enact her gender identity by citing a gendered disposition discourse, but certainly
different interpretations are possible. For example perhaps this passion for dance has nothing to do with her personal characteristics.
Instead, perhaps Giada has repeatedly seen a poster, an advertisement, a television program, a performance by a ballerina in a tutu
that reinforces the idea of dance as a proper activity for girl/woman. Or, she may have had a chance encounter with some dance
celebrity with which there is another resonance between dance and femaleness. Any and all of these events these might have interpellated her (Althusser, 1971) rather than providing an opportunity to give expression to some pre-existing or innate qualities that
she possesses.
However, it is interesting to note how the gendered career narrative displays, from the very beginning, some contradictions and an
ambivalence that will reappear in the third module. If, on the one hand, Giada does not use default identication in the female gender,
because she constitutes herself as an . a well brought up person (not as a girl or a female), or a well-rounded individual, on the other,
she performs identity in line with gender norms about interests and sports. In addition, if the text presents a reluctance to use
gender categories, because male/female is not mentioned explicitly, however, gender is implicated in through reference to the
recreational/sporting activities with which she identies. For example, she underlines her dislike of soccer on the one hand I think
that they are dumb, the ones who all chase after the ball, while, simultaneously, lauding her engagement with dance. The effect
obtained here is a magnication of the binarism soccer = male/man V's dance = female/woman.
Furthermore, the use of strong words such as hate and dumb, referring to soccer and to those who play it, makes clear that
identication of gender comes about through dis-identication with the opposite category: in other words, I identify as female if I
assert that I hate those activities most obviously associated with males and that I am not like them. In these rst lines, it is interesting,
above all, to observe the ambivalence of Giada's positioning through the slippery medium of language, that is, the ambivalence of
agency. On the one hand, by highlighting her commitment to dance, Giada enacts gender in a conformist way and reinforces gendered
disposition discourses about female-typical vocational interests. However, she also seems reluctant to explicitly re-enact the gender
binary, when she positions herself as a person or an individual a putatively gender-neutral position. The text reveals that there
is room for agency, amid the regulatory discourses, as a linguistic act that paradoxically reinforces and eclipses the binary logic
(dichotomous and oppositional) of gender.
4.2. The gendered (secretary) discourse
The narrative continues and in another session, entitled The dream of Crazy Horse, a short novel about the childhood of the Indian
Chief was read. As a child, on the banks of a lake, Crazy Horse had a vision: the Great Spirit appeared to him and announced his
mission. Immediately after the reading, the students were in the Lake and, with music playing in the background, pictured themselves
getting out of the lake 20 years later. Giada wrote:
I imagined myself initially after the exam in the third year of middle school, (age 14), then after the nal school-leaving exam
(age 18/19) and nally after university graduation [] at a certain point, after 30 years, I imagined myself as a secretary in a
dentist's surgery, then, as I didn't like it, I searched going to ofce after ofce, without success though. After that I applied to
the most important ofces before becoming the secretary of the President of the Italian Republic. One day on a trip to
America I meet the President of the United States and he, observing that I'm pretty smart, asks if I'd like a job interview. I reply
that I would be honored and that I know the English language well, as I attended Liceo Linguistico (high school specializing in
modern languages), yes, I reply. After some months, long since back in Italy, I receive a letter from the USA. Straightaway I think
that it comes from the President and so I don't have the courage to open it, but after a while I realize that I must open it, because
that letter might change my life. I open it and the answer is yes, yes, yes, they have accepted my application to be secretary of
the President of the USA. I have no words to express my happiness. I will organize the life and engagements of one of the most
important men in the world! I still can't believe it. The rst thing I do is telephone my family and give them the good news. Then
I pack my bags and head for the airport All my efforts have been rewarded by this joy I feel really important!
In this text the gendering of career narrative is more explicit. Giada tells of how she intends to continue her studies attending Liceo
Linguistico (High school specializing in modern languages) and her vocational dream is to become the secretary. Her aspirations
follow the typical mode of career progression, displaying dissatisfaction with her early secretarial role in a dental practice which
stimulates her to move on to become the secretary of the most important person in Italy the (male) President. However, even

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201

this peak of ambition is superseded by her ultimate aim of becoming secretary to the President of the USA who, of course, is also
conceived of as a man. It is in this progression of career aspiration that Giada becomes perfectly content and happy.
The gendered positioning within Giada's career narrative comes about through what we have labeled a gendered (secretary)
discourse, which produces, reproduces and strengthens gender as an asymmetric binary (man-woman) system. We note that Giada
writes about studying languages not to become, for instance, an international sales manager or other bi-lingual professional in her
own right, but to be the secretary of the most powerful man (not woman) in the world: here are power and heterosexuality at
play. Giada's career narrative is gendered through the evocation of a heterosexually-modeled working relationship (not woman
woman), in which the woman occupies a subordinate position. The act of subordination required of a woman in a dichotomous
and asymmetric system, produces her existence, that is, the woman becomes such, becomes visible (to herself and to the world),
insofar as she is a surface reecting the man's light. Here we have an updating of the biblical myth that tells of the woman born
from the rib of a man. And the greater the asymmetry, all the more existence and prestige are conferred upon the woman. Giada's
career narrative repeats this discursive practice when in her story she narrates her social rise that takes her from being a dentist's
secretary, to being that of the Italian President, before arriving in the ofce of the President of the United States. In the presence of
the latter Giada feels honored, and when she is informed of the successful outcome of her interview, there it is, an explosion of joy,
not only for having won herself the job, but because being the secretary of an important man makes her (un)equally important:
All my efforts have been rewarded by this happiness I feel really important!.
In Giada's story, moreover, subordination, as a founding act of female identity, takes the classic form of caring (in perfect harmony
with gender norms about serving others): she will organize the life and engagements of one of the most important men. Giada will
take care of not only the working life of the president but also of his personal one. In keeping with those discourses which attribute
women the traditional traits of femininity the capacity for caring, for nurture and for sharing we witness Giada's aspirations
toward a gender-conformist role in imagining her future career. We are dealing with characteristics described as being tting for
the performance of the domestic and reproductive duties that elevate the woman to the position of keeper of the hearth. And
here we wish to remind the reader that the care discourse was already in embryo in the rst text when Giada wrote that babysitting
her cousin was a source of some pleasure to her. Although Giada's career narrative also speaks of an aspiration to climb the social
ladder, to get ahead, an aspiration with masculine connotations, Giada's career narrative still fundamentally re-enacts and reinforces
the norms and expectations of gender that result in the segregation of women, that is in the delimitation and attribution of specic
forms of behavior, roles, professions and work positions (typically teaching and service professions) based on gender.
4.3. The gendered (dancer) discourse
During the second session Giada imagines her adult self being, apart from the US president's personal secretary, a ballerina. Her
passion for dance and for ballet, in particular takes center stage once again in the account entitled What are you able to do to be
found in the next session. In this session attention was focused on the youngsters' existing talents and skills with stories being read
out and lm clips watched in which some adolescents put their abilities to the test. One of the clips presented was taken from the
lm Billy Elliot, the story of an English boy who undertakes a career as a ballet dancer, against the wishes of a father who would
have liked to see him become a boxer. Having viewed the lm, the students were invited to relate, in the way that best suited
them, their abilities and how and when these abilities had been put to the test. Giada's text opens with the gendered (dancer)
discourse encountered in the rst module tinged with a particular fear:
I'm afraid of the lifting in the dance, of the acrobatics in which a male must, either just raise you up into the air, or spin you
around, I don't know if I'm afraid that he'll drop me or whether I'm afraid of looking silly to the others. It's something I've never
understood.
It is this rst use in these texts of the word male, that immediately and explicitly tinges Giada's career narrative with gender
hardly surprising given that classic ballet tropes on the relations between female and male in a stylized fashion. In classical ballet
the postures, movements, terminology, steps and all other elements that delimit this world, are rmly structured around gender
and (re)produce gender binarism constituting female dancers as nymphs, whose bodies move evanescently on the stage, weightless
and without substance Bodies to be identied as female wear tutus, which announce their non-materiality (Benozzo, Ljungberg,
Adamo, in press).
Dance practice and discourse position Giada (the ballerina lifted up by the male) as she who may fall (a physical and emotional fall
given that ballet often evokes heterosexual couple relationships), who may be abandoned or let go by a man who fails to maintain his
grip: the male lover walks away, and the woman falls at his feet. Linking the dancer discourse with that of the secretary, Giada's
gendered positioning is complemented and enriched. Conversely, the man (the male), in these texts is positioned as he who raises
the woman, lifts her up high and has her performing acrobatics, having her take ight even (in ballet), or elevates her to a new status
(in the world of work). The ballerina-secretary risks, alongside a fall to the ground, a fall in status too: the secretary might be got rid of
by her President-boss and obliged to return to her humble background.
Essentially these texts re-enact/reproduce/do gender through two principal discourses that position Giada in a hierarchical
relationship, subordinate to the man. In particular, performing ballet implies a reproduction, on every occasion, of a scene of
subordination and the gender norms that are inscribed therein in which the margins for agency, that is to say the possibility to
act, are interstitial, minimal or perhaps impossible. Could it not be the woman holding up the man? And might we think of cosupport, or co-holding-up? Or further, could it be two women holding one another up high? Ultimately, though, can an adolescent

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escape the inexorable reproduction of the hierarchical norms that mean that the woman is elevated through the agency of men to
being a ballerina or a secretary?
In the writings that we have analyzed so far, Giada's career narrative appears disciplined by gender norms: few ways-out from
conformism are to be detected, but something different presents itself in the following passage, where the reluctance to use gender
categories which we had emphasized in the opening section of this analysis gets its second wind when Giada, once more called
upon by the lm Billy Elliot, decides to write him the following letter:
Dear Billy Elliot, I understand your passion, because it's mine too. Like you, I also began to do a sport that didn't do it for me,
which is why I began dancing. [] Unlike my dance classmates, I do it because I like it and because I feel good in myself; while
they do it just to do a female sport. I consider it a sport for both sexes. They do dance, rather than doing soccer or basketball,
which they call male sports. I don't think that sport is divided into two categories but I do think that everyone is free to
practise the sport they want
In this letter Giada positions herself in opposition to her dance classmates, referred to merely as them. The paradox of this fragment
of career narrative is represented by the fact that Giada practices dance (a sport with typical female connotations), but at the same
time seems to differentiate herself from her classmates who practise it because they consider it an activity for women. We glimpse
in this text some scope for challenging the gendered character of a dancer discourse, since Giada, while imagining traditional career
paths in gender terms (the lady-ballerina, the language student, the woman-secretary), problematizes the gender reading of dance.
Giada's text emphasizes (written in bold in the original) and thus questions the fact that in sport (and in dance) there applies a
disciplining discourse (there are sports suitable for men and sports suitable for women), that reproduces a dichotomous vision of
gender. The category is unmasked in the text through the phrase [there are sports] they call male. I do not think that sport is divided
into two categories but I do think that everyone is free to practise the sport they want. It is in this passage that there emerges a
criticism of the constrictive power of the categories regulating areas that should not be normed by gender. The positioning here
lies outside binary normativity.
Giada's agency is expressed not so much in her criticisms of her classmates who choose in terms of gender categories, but in
criticizing gender categories. Giada, quite like her female classmates, performs gender identity in line with gender norms, she does
not subvert identity, but, she does question and disturb the regulatory practice of discourses (Chambers, 2007). Giada's career
narrative shows how agency is riven with paradox (Butler, 2004).
The subject Giada at the very moment when she identies as a woman (through dancer and secretary discourses), assumes the
position that is naturally hers: that is to say, a subordinate, ancillary position, a weight to be lifted and a humble secretary to be raised
in service to an important man. Giada takes the place assigned to her in the scene of power, and contributes to the reproduction of that
scene, by repeating it. However, once in that position, she sounds uncomfortable and tries to question the terms, to broaden the space
restricted by such dichotomous categories and rescue the career narrative from the rigidity of gender norms.
At a mere 14 years of age, in the very instant in which she repeats the discourses, Giada reinforces them, simultaneously seeming
to resist them, demonstrating through her writing that the battle between freedom and conditioning, between agency and power, is
also played out by the subject in linguistic acts (Butler, 1990, 1997), in the variations in the repetitions (Deleuze, 1968). And what if
adolescents were actually better at these games than adults?
5. Conclusion
By analyzing Giada's career narrative we have highlighted how identity and gender are mutually implicated and are constituted by
discourses of intelligibility that have become sedimented over time to seem natural and unquestionable. Gender is something that
we create and recreate continuously through discursive practices (Gherardi & Poggio, 2001). However, this paper demonstrates
how post-structural theory is useful in disturbing our understandings of how adolescents position themselves in career narratives
and reenact/do gender through such discourses. At the same time we have shown, through the analysis of Giada's agency, that
these discourses are not absolute or unmodiable, but rather, that they can be challenged. We are the rst to wish to challenge
discourses, and, in particular, the gender difference discourse that is repeated and reinforced by career studies.
The gender differences approach, examining or assuming permanent differences of gender, that traces distinct career outcomes for
men and women, actually perpetuates gender norms and the popular belief that gender is an attribute innate to individuals (Alvesson
& Billing, 2009; Bendl & Schmidt, 2013), rather than something that we create according to and through those wider discourses
circulating in society.
We desire, moreover, to turn on its head the deterministic proposition that gender differences, being considered innate and/or
socialized in childhood, lead to different careers. In her writings Giada suggests to us an alternative argument: what if girls chose
sports merely because they are female sports? They do it just to do a female sport. Instead of reiterating that individuals have
different vocational interests because they are male and female, we could begin to say that individuals choose a sport or a career
because performing that sport or career reassures them that they are male and female. I do not choose to be a secretary because I
am a woman, but because that profession, regulated by gender discourses, convinces me that I am a woman and, above all, that I
can be better recognized as such by the opposing category, men.
Gender differences may be therefore read as the retroactive, performative effect of career discourses. An effect that is manifested
widely in the material world, in the explicit career action and choices of individuals. The rst practical recommendation of this study
is, therefore, directed to researchers in the careers eld, and is that they should not repeat uncritically the gender differences

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203

discourse, because, for too long, inequalities with regard to gender identity, have been perpetuated thanks to the stamp of approval of
scientic research.
The paper also has implications for career counseling practice. Thinking of gender as something that adolescents do, rather than as
a natural attribute, may help career counselors become more conscious of the hegemonic gender discourses that operate in and
through those career narratives that circulate as natural and taken-for-granted. Such increased awareness could create a more
legitimate space in which career counseling practices attempt to challenge, change and problematize these hegemonic discourses.
In the practice of traditional narrative career counseling, for example, the following elements can be identied: the persistent binary
logic and sedimented meanings present in gendered narratives of career; the relations of power through which the subject is asked to
position him/herself; the contrast and contradictions that characterize gender discourses and constitute a particular type of
proper man or woman. Once career counselors recognize and problematize these discourses, they can also ask themselves how
non-gender-normative identities, which often remain silent, can nd a space for legitimacy and expression.
In this light, the practice of career counseling could nd inspiration and allow itself some contamination from those attempts to
disrupt the unquestioned heteronormativity (Brickell, 2006) of practice interventions within the world of social work (Hicks, 2008;
Hicks & Watson, 2003) and of schools (Atkinson & DePalma, 2009), which have opened up queer spaces to question gender discourses
and the structures of power that these convey. Our paper, in essence, concludes with an appeal for greater attention to be paid to the
fact that gender is (re)produced through the language and discourses of careers: in the very instant in which we speak of gender
we are reproducing it (in dichotomous and asymmetrical terms) but that it can also change. This paper invites us and our readers
to (re)consider how career narratives reinforce traditional gendered discourses and practices in the context of career counseling
practices.

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