This website highlights:
- some of the many women working in ‘non-traditional’ jobs,
- points to the pathways to these jobs and
- includes links to a range of innovative programs that encourage girls to explore all careers
High school is a time when students begin to seek advice on further study and career opportunities.
This is the time to encourage you, the young women to consider career options in the skilled trades and or in further study in science, technology, engineering and maths, because these in-demand jobs pay well and offer more secure work in jobs that are in demand.
Seeing women already in and loving these jobs can reassure you and other girls that they too could do this.
Role models are important to support and inform your career exploration and decision-making especially when you are considering non-traditional occupations.
Role models can help explode myths about what girls can or should do.
The advantages of a career in these occupations can include greater financial independence with a higher income, flexible work arrangements with the increased ability to work for yourself and enhanced opportunities in careers that are in-demand.
economic Security4Women is hosting this website as a contribution to the commitment secured under Australia’s presidency of the G20: for G20 leaders to reduce the gender gap in participation rates by 25% by 2025. Specific to the Australian context, this will see up to 200,000 additional women participating in the Australian labour force.
Today young women in Australia consistently do better than young men in secondary school, they but are less likely to get jobs in the high-income, in- demand fields of careers based on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) or in the skilled trades.
Lack of women working in these industries is one cause of the pay gap between men and women; it not only weakens the economic wellbeing of individual women, it is not good for Australia’s economy as a whole. Recent figures suggest that increasing women’s employment rates could boost Australia’s GDP by 11 per cent (Broderick, 2013). Visit the WGEA Pay Gap Factsheet at https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/2014-03-04-Gender_Pay_Gap_factsheet_website.pdf
Through this website we aim to assist young women to convert their school success to career success in these non-traditional occupations and industries.