Research on women and employment, and on women generally, has had a tendency to focus on either person or situation variables, overlooking behavior as a function of the interaction of both. The omission of situation variables and the concentration on person variables in research on women and employment has serious consequences in drawing policy implications. The proportion of variance must be known, since research summaries suggest that situation-person variables generally account for more variance than either alone. Society also confounds the variables, using person explanations for characteristics which really are situation-determined. Various examples from the literature on women and employment show some of the influence of structures and the revokability of women's career choices and development, but the major theories of career development fail to understand the importance of the mediating variable of sex roles. (LS)