ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on data from an exploratory 1975 study on career patterns, life styles, and attitudes among women in top jobs. Women in high status positions can be expected to be subject to a fairly unique combination of social pressures that may lead to an alienated rather than integrated attitude toward existing social structures. In the absence of a control group of unsuccessful women for comparison an index was developed to distinguish between the relatively more and the relatively less successful women in the sample. The majority of women who rise in the occupational structure seem relatively unlikely to cause changes in the outlook and ideological orientations of societal elites. Employed women confronted with the consequences of hierarchical and often authoritarian organizational structures in their daily work most clearly have an individual and material interest in introducing mechanisms for participation.
