A Personal Bio-Psycho-Social Assessment

My purpose in writing this report is to present a bio-psycho-social self-assessment, a task made difficult by the fact that it requires me to be objective about issues that are ultimately rather subjective. As Baron and Byrne (2000) have pointed out, objectivity about the self requires introspection, reflection and a willingness to honestly share personal details with an audience that one may not know particularly well. Nevertheless, this is the task at hand.

I will begin by describing myself. I am a 25-year-old African-American female attending college who works to support herself. In this simple statement, I have revealed several key facts about who and what I am. I am a woman born and raised in America and who is therefore "Western" and individual in my worldview. As a member of a racial minority group, I have a connection to the culture, traditions, values and norms of that group; I am also to some small degree conscious of the fact that as an African-American, I am in some fairly subtle ways "different" from other American women of my age cohort who are Asian, Hispanic, or Caucasian.

As a woman, particularly a woman living in a society that remains largely dominated by a male power structure and male elite, I face certain challenges that my male peers do not. Further, and perhaps more significantly, my gender and its implications in terms of reproductive and sexual matters is a significant determinant of identity. T

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at it is true for many others regardless of race or ethnicity. As a young woman, I am also inescapably aware of the effects of biology and gender on shaping my identity. Though I do not now have children, it is my expectation that I will have children after marriage in the future. I value the expectation of motherhood and see it as part of a fulfilled life. However, I see no reason to think of this as my primary function in this world. I have plans for a career and believe that biology should not stand in the way of career success. As a woman who works, I am also aware that there is still a "glass ceiling" that prevents the advancement of many women in American business. Macionis (2003) makes note of the fact that despite the enormous gains made by women in recent years in both education and the professions, women still constitute a relatively small percentage of the country's top leaders and executives. Women continue to confront enormous barriers to their advancement economically; it is no accident that the vast majority of families living in poverty in the United States are headed by single mothers (Macionis, 2003). For many women, limited opportunity for career advancement is further exacerbated by the fact tha
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Approximate Word count = 3607
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)