Abstract. This study investigates the possible influence of gender and culture on the career maturity and study and work role salience of South African students. Responses to the Life Role Inventory and Career Development Questionnaire of 260 first-year university students (137 white, 123 black) were analyzed. Culture was found to have a significant effect on both career maturity and study and work role salience while gender had no significant effect. Results are related to previous findings from international and South African literature. Implications for counselling are discussed.Super holds that the maturing of an individual's career attitudes and knowledge can only occur within a life space where work has importance. Nevill and Super (1983) point out that successful counselling of students on a tertiary level is dependent on'knowledge of both students' readiness to make a career choice (i.e. their career maturity) as well as how important work is to such students. Thus readiness for career decision making is dependent on the importance work holds for an individual, that is there needs to be a motivation for a career and for study towards such a career. Without this motivation, the attitudes and information necessary to cope with the developmental task of career decision making becomes irrelevant to the individual (Super, 1983).Examining the importance of the student and worker roles as well as the level of career maturity of university students has relevance not only for developed countries but for a developing country such as South Africa. The high failure rate amongst white and particularly black university students may be due, in part, to low salience of the study and work roles and/or low career maturity. In addition, black students face the added disadvantage of an inferior level of education and a lack of counselling facilities. Counselling students for future careers appears inexact at best and irrelevant at worst when the sa'l]ence of fhe study and work roles and the developmental readiness of a student to deal with career decision making remains an unknown within the counselling process.