This study attempts to explore, describe, and explain women students' expectations about their life courses; in particular, by focusing on both the preferences of the agents and structural factors, based on the controversy between Hakim, and Crompton and Harris. While Hakim asserts that employment patterns are determined by innate ‘preferences’, Crompton and Harris oppose her assertion and emphasize that ‘employment structures are theoutcome of both choice and constraints’. For this purpose, a cross-sectional survey on women students and their parents was conducted in a university in Japan, using self-administered postal questionnaires with questions devised about women's expectations.
The conclusion of the study was that women students' life course expectations are changeable and ambivalent. This paper discusses the dilemma they face between strong occupational aspirations and the responsibilities of childrearing, important but unforeseen life events, and ambivalent messages from their parents. The strong responsibility they feel toward childrearing tends to make their life course expectations flexible, because if theyfeel they will face constraints in the future, they might tend to prioritize family careers rather than occupational ones. Therefore, as Crompton and Harris state, the life course expectations of women students reflect not only their preferences but also their future constraints.
Moreover, this study clarifies the fact that women students' parents possess strong expectations, toward both occupational and family careers, for their daughters. Their values regarding gender roles are also ambivalent. It was found that these values and expectations toward their daughters affect women students' life course expectations.
This work is the first stage of a projected longitudinal panel study, through which the process of women's life course formations will be explored.
