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Guidance and Counseling

Notes Marital counseling, like any other counseling, is strictly voluntary. Clients seek assistance on their
own and the counselor offers assistance only when it is sought for by the clients.
Another issue in structuring concerns the fees. The scale of fees has to be worked out both by the
counselor and the clients. The timing and duration of the counseling sessions also have to be worked
out to the mutual convenience of the clients and the counselor. The counselor should make the
clients understand the importance of time and should not encourage a laissez-faire attitude on the
part of the clients.
As counseling is a professional service and has an ethical code, it respects the confidences of the
clients. The counselor has to secure the trust of the client and establish a healthy rapport. Clients do
not usually volunteer information and the counselor has to skilfully elicit it. Another very fundamental
and important aspect of marital counseling concerns referral. For instance, in matters concerning
physical aspects of sex, the counselor should make a proper referral to the appropriate specialist
and obtain the necessary help. He should not substitute heresay information for specialist knowledge.
There could be factors involving health. A referral may have to be made to a physician. Sometimes
it may even be necessary to make a referral to a psychiatrist.

One important fact that the client must learn is that the counselor is not there to give
solutions; he only provides them with a sense of orientation which enables them to believe
that a solultion has to be found on the basis of their own involvement.

32.6 Counseling Women
In the late sixties a populist and vocal women’s liberation movement made its appearance. Marriage
is no longer the only option for every woman. Some women deliberately opt out of matrimony or
choose to bear no children and become careerists. The modern woman is in a world of transition
with no specific traditions or conventions to guide her. So in trying to find their feet women are
seeking counseling assistance. Counseling of women has become a special area of concern in modern
times. It was traditionally believed that men and women differed significantly from each other in
their physical capacities. The most crucial question today is whether, owing to such physical
differences, the status and role of men and women in society should differ. If so, should women be
assigned to inferior positions? While men have a very large number of occupations to choose from,
the occupations open to women are very restricted. Somehow literature and story books have
presented women as dependent on men, docile and shy, and hardly ever as great intellects, successful
scientists, mathematicians, or researchers.
Women today have more avenues open to them than their counterparts had in the first part of the
twentieth century. Many significant changes have taken place owing to the two World wars,
knowledge explosion, urbanization and industrialization. Modern expectations in advanced societies
place severe strains on those women who continue to conform to the out-moded sex-role stereotype.
The male stereotype is regarded more positively Broverman, et all (1972) have reported that women
have more negative self-concepts than men. Wolfe (1969) argues that the sex role identity is closely
related to the careers chosen by women. Horner (1970) concludes that “when the fear of success
interferes with the desire to be successful the result is an inhibition of achievement motivation”.
Many young women, according to her, have a conflict between their need for achievement and the
need to conform to their female image. Such conflicts lead to negative emotional consequences.
Sex stereotypes are traditionally promoted through socialization. The educational system also
reinforces the sex stereotypes as an important agency of socialization. A belief based on these
stereotypes is that the sexes are unequal and are, therefore, suited for different vocations. Social and
economic roles are also determined by the sex stereotypes. Thus women’s role was always limited

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