The underrepresentation of women in high status, traditionally male professions can be attributed to sex-role socialization and discrimination. To examine the relationship between personal characteristics and stress in a sex-role incongruent situation, female (N=64) and male (N=21) engineering, management, and pre-medical students completed measures of achievement motivation, fear of success, sex-role orientation, and social self-esteem. The personality measures were used: (1) to predict grade point average (GPA); (2) with GPA to predict perceived success; and (3) with perceived success to predict five stress and illness measures. High achievement motivation and low social self-esteem predicted higher GPA's. Perceived success and social self-esteem were the strongest predictors of the stress and illness measures. Lower levels on these personal variables were related to detrimental effects for women entering traditionally male professions. The findings suggest that these personality scales, considered alone, do not account for much of the variance in stress and health. (Author/RC)