“Women are the silent ambassadors of change”
Women: more educated than ever before, still taking on the bulk of caring responsibilities, sick of meaningless work and under-utilised skills, & over the empty promise of true workplace flexibility are designing portfolio careers like never before.
Way back in 1989, author Charles Handy predicted this to be the way of the future, a move away from the concept of one full time career and the rise of people having multiple careers, either over their working lives, or concurrently. Today, many of our societal and workplace structures (and certainly Australian employment law and a great number of businesses) still perpetuate the full time notion of a successful career. Despite this, almost 30 years after Handy's writings, women are putting the portfolio career into action in a variety of ways. Multiple part-time roles, running businesses, directorships, volunteering roles, side hustles etc - all often combined into the equivalent of a full time career.
Even in this era of self promotion and social media, the true importance of this shift isn't being celebrated or recognised and most women I know, play down their achievements and don't see what they are doing as equivalent to the career of a full time professional or similar. Instead, it's "just" what they do each day/week/month/year to pursue their dreams, utilise their education & knowledge and make an income.
However, this is the future of work and the expectation for companies, working men & women and, importantly, our young people as they enter the workforce over the next decade, will need to embrace this as what work and a career means.
Careers come in all shapes and sizes and the future of work is only going to prove moreso.
So, it is time for women to stand up and be recognised as the trailblazers of careers done differently, redefining what success means and leading, by example, our future generations into a new way of work. And through this let’s start to change both the expectations and regulations about what work and careers means in modern day Australian society.