Tuesday, August 04, 2009 at 10:43 AM
My apologies in advance for what is a little bit of a rant this week. But - would you prefer to have a career that you love or a job that pays you more?
It’s something that I considered briefly yesterday as I flicked through The Sunday Mail. One story in particular caught my eye: called ”Revealing secrets of the sisterhood” it was outlining a range of women-related statistics compiled by the Qld Office for Women. You can download the 125-page report here.
It wasn’t so much the stats that caught my eye but rather the comments attributed to the Qld Minister for Women, Karen Struthers. Because apparently Karen feels that, in order to improve equality and understanding of women, there are some areas that need to be addressed. Namely, that women should “think outside the box” in terms of career choice and, to quote the article, aim for careers that would give them better pay and conditions, such as engineering, construction and mining.
Really? How about aiming for women to be understood in the careers that they choose, rather than advising them to switch to “better” jobs? Wouldn’t that be perhaps a bit more out of the box?
It doesn’t seem to be on the agenda for the Qld Office for Women though, which for the past four years has had a taskforce busily working on strategies to encourage women into the fields of science, engineering and technology. It’s called the ”Smart Women – Smart State” action plan, and its role is to help women move into “smart” jobs.
“Smart” jobs?
Now don’t get me wrong – I’m in favour of everything that helps women to increase their education and career opportunities – not to mention their financial future. The campaign itself is laudable - it’s just the terminology I don’t like. And if mining and construction might interest you then check out their ”Women in Hard Hats” fact sheet. But otherwise - don’t diss the career choices that we make by excluding them from the “smart” category.
Because a lot of people - men and women - choose a career based on what interests them; what their passion is as opposed to what the likely paycheck could be. That doesn’t always mean that we leave school and start doing exactly what we want to do, but a lot of us eventually find our way to what we love doing. So to be encouraged, basically, to make a “smarter” choice is really quite offensive.
The report highlights that women are not well represented in senior positions in any industry, particularly in “those which have the greatest financial reward or in those with the greatest influence in our society.
“Women remain under-represented in the high-paid mining, construction and technology industries, and over-represented in lower paid fields such as teaching, child care and nursing.” The report goes on to say that this is reflected in salary levels and future superannuation payouts.
But you know what? We already know that!!! And it’s a trade-off that many of us are happy to make in order to balance kids and work and family life in general. Many of us don’t want to be in a senior position with the demands on our time that that would create. We are happy with the career choices we’ve made and we are aware that there’s a financial trade-off for that.
Look at it this way: in Qld women are more likely to complete secondary school and more likely to hold a bachelor’s degree than our male counterparts. So – we’re not uneducated. Presumably we could study whatever we wanted to, but we choose the courses and careers that we enjoy. And we do understand the choices we’re making – and we understand that there’s a lot more to a smart career decision than the take-home pay. Not that anyone is calling us dumb, of course – but perhaps just not “smart”.
That’s my rant, anyway, and feel free to shout me down if I’m wrong. But how about you? Did you choose your career for love, or money? Or are you still looking for either??
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