Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationBody dissatisfaction affects women across the world and may have serious implications on their career and educational pursuits. A sample of 724 women completed an online survey designed to explore the relationships between body dissatisfaction, career aspiration and expectation discrepancies, educational aspirations, and perceived career barriers. Ordinal and logistic regression analyses were conducted to explore associations between variables. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between women’s body dissatisfaction and discrepancies in the complexity of their career aspirations and expectations. A significant inverse relationship was illustrated between women’s body dissatisfaction and educational aspirations. When controlling for BMI, self-esteem, and perceived career barriers, results varied in regards to the impact of women’s body dissatisfaction on career aspiration/expectation discrepancies and educational aspirations. It appears that BMI may be more predictive than body dissatisfaction of discrepancies in the congruence of women’s career aspirations and expectations and educational aspirations when controlling for perceived career barriers and self-esteem. Due to violations of normality within the data, results should be interpreted with caution. Implications for future research and limitations of the study are discussed