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How schools can prepare women for workplace success

Women in Higher Education - December 1, 2003

Services and information have replaced manufacturing in driving the new U.S. economy. What does that mean for women? In its research report Women at Work (2003), the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation found good news and bad news for women in the changing American workplace.

More women hold paid jobs than ever before and they have good prospects for employment in fast-growing fields. But "fast growing" ranges from computer engineers to home health aides, with women's opportunities clustered at the low end. Women have less access than men to jobs that are family-friendly and pay above average. If current trends continue, the gender gap will increase.

Whole groups of women are being left behind, finding work chiefly in the least desirable service jobs. Single mothers, less educated women and women of color worry most about whether the new economy has a place for them.

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How can colleges better prepare women students for success in today's and tomorrow's workplaces? Ann Gustafson, president of the Wisconsin AAUW and coordinator of the St. Croix County WI Women's Victim/Witness Assistance Program, asked women at a WWHEL workshop how colleges can help get action on the four recommendations of the AAUW report:

1. Increase educational opportunity for women and girls in underrepresented racial/ethnic communities.

2. Promote the benefits of education in computer science, engineering, mathematics, and technology to women and girls, and create opportunities and incentives for women and girls to pursue these fields.

3. Enhance women's education and training in financial management and economic self-sufficiency, particularly for single working mothers.

4. Promote equitable access to flexible work arrangements and more research on work-family programs.

1. Access for the under-represented

Pay, prestige and flexible hours come with jobs that require higher education. Women have far more education now than in 1980 and graduate from high school and college at higher rates than men. But not everybody shares the benefit.

Latinas are the only group to average less than a high school education. Over the past two decades their jobs have shifted away from manual labor (packer, wrapper, farm worker, assembler) toward service jobs like nurse's aide, maid, house cleaner or janitor. They work the fewest reported hours a week, probably because much of their work is in the informal labor market.

African American women work the most hours per week and are most often single, frequently single parents. Three of their top ten jobs are professional or managerial, but few report family-friendly policies at work.

Native American women are least likely to work in the fast-growing fields with higher-than-average pay. Asian American and white women have the most years of schooling and are more than twice as likely to hold such jobs.

Why? Traditional school and college structures conflict with the cultural realities of Hispanic, African American and Native American women's lives. Family and community expectations are much stronger in those groups compared with the individualism of mainstream white culture.

Closing the gap between haves and have-nots will take a deliberate effort to increase educational access and opportunity. It will require new forms of support for women with heavy family and community expectations.

One-on-one mentoring and peer support groups are invaluable. Language, cost, hours, childcare, eldercare, role models and counseling all need a fresh look. Suggestions from WWHEL workshop members:

Investigate by talking with low-resource women in underrepresented communities about their needs.

Educate and empower such women to access the resources already in place.

Create coalitions with local business and industry to provide new resources.

2. Tech-savvy education

American women are more educated than ever before and more hold professional and managerial positions. Women college graduates most often become elementary schoolteachers and nurses. Not enough prepare for high-growth, high-pay careers as systems analysts, software designers and engineers.

"It's not that women are hitting a glass ceiling in the hitech sector. It's that they don't have the keys to open the door," according to AAUW Educational Foundation President Mary Ellen Smyth.

High school girls know that a college degree will help them toward better jobs, but there's a shortage of counseling about the different earnings prospects of the fields. Only 28% of female college students (but 41% of male) are preparing for work in science, engineering or information technology. Future earnings have particular importance for women who finance college with student loans.

Attitudes about careers form as early as middle school. An earlier AAUW study, Tech-Savvy (2000), found girls bored by programming classes and turned off by violent computer games. Comfortable with email and the Internet, they're fine with computers but dislike the computer culture.

"Pink" computer games about Barbie aren't the answer. Girls want non-gender-specific activities that involve skills and interaction. Colleges that train teachers need to go beyond introducing hardware. Education majors need to learn innovative computer uses in each subject area, so students can follow any interest as a doorway into using technology.

Some colleges sponsor after-school clubs or summer camps presenting technology as fun and challenging. Girls and boys at one college-run camp design a Website. Other ideas from the WWHEL workshop:

* Investigate the many misconceptions about what kinds of women enter hi-tech careers.

* Educate early, bringing middle-school girls to campus for hands-on experience. Offer female role models "so they don't think everyone in technology is a techno-nerd with no life."

* Create well-marketed chances for young women to learn about technology careers and the women who work in them.

3. Financial literacy

"If you are a single mom, you have to worry about the rent and child care--which is ridiculous--and food and everything. It is really hard," said one focus group participant in the AAUW research study.

Women in the focus groups expressed high anxiety about learning new skills for a changing job market. The stakes are high. More women than ever are single and self-supporting, living with the consequences of early decisions about education and savings.

Students are financing college with debt that will take years to repay. They're deluged with credit cards in the mail, making it all too easy to take on additional debt.

Lenders automatically list husbands before wives; years later ex-wives and widows learn that they don't have a credit rating in spite of years of responsible payments. Retirement often means loss of income for older women, who may be without personal savings.

Low-income and immigrant women are especially vulnerable to the high costs of financial illiteracy. Many low-income women pay someone to do their tax return because it's too hard to figure out for themselves. Cash stores in poor neighborhoods charge to cash paychecks.

Financial literacy can help women stay in school and live more comfortably on whatever jobs they hold. "We have sex education in the schools, why not financial literacy?" a WWHEL workshop member asked.

One university is trying to improve student retention rates through its advisement center. It helps students sort out budgets, credit cards and debt. Pre-graduation meetings give special attention to students entering low-paying occupations like the ministry.

Student counseling services at another school include a specialist in financial planning, to help students develop practical financial skills. Books for women about money are out there. So are Websites such as:

- www.womens-finance.com/ (general)

- www.msmoney.com/index.asp (general)

- www.count-me-in.org/ (small business loans)

- www.wfn.com/ (investments)

- www.ssa.gov/women/ (Social Security)

Informed counselors can help students find a resource that's best for them. Schools can sponsor money conferences like a recent one in Boston. More ideas from the women at WWHEL:

* Investigate the financial literacy of incoming freshmen to find out what they need to learn.

* Educate students in partnership with banks, lenders and financial aid departments. Expose them to women working in banks, to model that understanding money isn't for only men.

* Create a financial literacy curriculum that could be used as a model. Targeted to college students, it could also be adapted to a younger age group.

4. Family-friendly policies

"How am I supposed to do it all? Tell me how," said a full-time worker and single mother of two small children. Taking classes would help her prospects but there just aren't enough hours in the day.

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