Women Still at Work by Elizabeth F. Fideler

Author:Elizabeth F. Fideler [Fideler, Elizabeth F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

A plethora of titles describes the professional women I studied. For example, in education they are professor, teacher, instructor, dean, interpreter, tutor, and director. In business they are president, owner, principal, manager, coordinator, supervisor, executive director, bookkeeper, paymaster, trainer, financial planner, writer, and editor. In social services they are therapist, social worker, counselor, and psychologist.

Two-thirds of these professional women are working in the private sector, the remainder in the public sphere (29 percent), or both public and private (6 percent). More than two-thirds hold jobs in a metropolitan area. Twenty-eight percent are working in nonmetropolitan locales and 5 percent work in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. On the whole, professional work has always been easier to find in metropolitan areas. However, the recession has weakened that premise, at least temporarily.3 Salaries also tend to be higher for urban workers than for workers in nonmetropolitan areas in the same occupations.4

Whether by personal choice or, more likely, by financial necessity, 17 percent of my respondents also have a second job today. Some of these are: after-school program counselor, church treasurer, tree farmer, actress, consultant, private practitioner, artist, substitute school nurse, and online salesperson. The tree farmer raises and sells Christmas trees with her husband as a side business; her primary business is running a real estate agency and she is a tree farmer by choice rather than out of necessity. The after-school counselor and the others have second jobs to bring in a little more money.

One woman who leads house-building projects in developing countries for Habitat for Humanity told me that she considers it to be her second job. I thought she was leading the tours for financial reasons, that is, to supplement her salary as an elementary school art teacher, but I found that I was mistaken when she explained her primary reason for undertaking the work—it seems she took to heart her yoga instructor’s admonition to “take one step toward the universe and the universe will respond in kind.” Although she receives no salary for her “second job,” she benefits from seeing the world, knowing that she is helping others, and acquiring new materials and ideas to use in her classroom.

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