In the face of rapid increases in women’s labour force participation and educational attainment, gender disparities in other measures of labour force outcomes in Indonesia remain persistent. Even for the tertiary educated sub-group of the urban population, sizeable gender disparities in hourly wage, total wage, and occupational segregation continue to materialize. This thesis is an extension of the existing international literature that points to traditional gender roles in marriage as the main supply-side drivers of the persistent gender gap in the labour market. Instead of focusing on the gender gap in observable labour force outcomes, the primary objective of this thesis ventures beyond the labour market, and adopts a micro-level approach to examine the gender dimensions of labour market aspirations in the context of expectations of gender roles in marriage amongst university students in urban Indonesia. The focal argument in this thesis is that gendered labour market expectations showing women’s lower intended labour force attachment relative to men, are a reflection of the prevailing norms in urban Indonesia denoting women’s secondary economic role in marriage. This thesis employs both secondary data sources and primary data collected through fieldwork. First, to provide context to primary data collection, the study utilises secondary data mostly drawn from the Population Module of the 2000 Indonesian Census, a nationally representative cross-sectional data set compiled by the Central Bureau of Statistics, to illustrate the labour market outcomes of the tertiary educated urban population and of tertiary educated couples. Second, fieldwork incorporating survey and in-depth interviews was conducted in 7 universities in Jakarta and 5 universities in Makassar between February – August 2004. The main data collection tool, The University Students Survey 2004: Expectations of Career and Marital Life, was administered among senior university students in the city of Makassar (N=674) and Jakarta (N=1087).