Challenging work

De Pater et al (2009) examined the relationship between challenging tasks and career growth potential in a group of 93 interns. Their study demonstrated a link between the intern's self-reported experience of challenging tasks and their supervisors' ratings of potential for career growth: those who reported a more challenging work experience were rated as more likely to succeed. The female interns reported having fewer challenging experiences than the male interns. In a separate experiment, 158 students were measured for gender differences in the choice to take on challenging tasks when personal performance was at a premium: women chose fewer challenges than men in this experiment as well.

According to Semykina and Lin (2007), "need for challenge" is a personality trait which occurs more often in men: it is described in opposition to "need for affiliation". However, Burke and Nelson's book Advancing women's careers (2002) claims that men and women tend to demonstrate an equal need for challenging work (see Cox and Harquail, 1991).

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This is a tough one to compare to my own experience, for damn sure. My career as a woman was an entirely separate industry than my career since transition (entertainment vs. education). Then again, it's arguable that I left entertainment because I wasn't being challenged anymore. Unfortunately, my own motivations and behavior are something of a black box to me. I can make educated guesses as why B follows A, but I can't get anything approaching causality out of it.

However, I am deeply dubious about the measurement of a scale that goes from "challenge" to "affiliation", and I wonder if there's a translation issue with the meanings of "competition" and "challenge."

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