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Adapting + Work Is Key to Being Self-Made

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Adapting + Work Is Key to Being Self-Made
Mary F Piecuch

Jon Ross

IDS-1600-F1-01

28 January 2013

Adapting + Work is Key to being Self-Made

The rise of women’s equality has gained momentum in the last forty years; however, it has been in the works for well over one hundred years. Adapting to the climate is what we must all strive for, women are adapting to our ever-changing economic climate more successfully.

While more recent times have seen women rising to the mainstream working class and becoming a “breadwinner” it wasn’t as though it never happened before. As a leader who played an important role in women’s rights movement, Susan B. Anthony kicked off her self-making doing just that…work. In 1839, following a financial crisis in her family, she left home to work to pay off her father’s debt. Initially teaching, she rose in the ranks and became the head mistress in the Female Department of Canajoharie Academy. This is now becoming a common theme, in that, women are picking up and working to support their household and in some cases their families.

Fast forward to current times, as the economy is vulnerable and companies are struggling women are surging in the workforce. I feel as though women find it perfectly acceptable that they can stay home and raise their families it the conditions are right, however, if conditions are not right women are willing to join the workforce. As stated by Patsy Prater in Hanna Rosins article, “My place is in the home, and I’m fine with that, so long as my husband is earning the bacon. ‘Course, that hasn’t been happening so much lately.” Today women hold half the workforce, this trend is continuing.

With the housing collapse and the hard skills that go along with that there are opportunities in more “soft” skill careers such as nursing, technology and customer service. Men tend to do well in hard skills as it goes along with societies expected masculine expectation of men. Of the 15 job categories projected to grow



Cited: Cauchon, Dennis. “Women gain as men lose jobs.” USA Today September 3, 2009 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-09-02-womenwork_N.htm Douglass, Frederick. “Self-Made Men” 1895 Kimmel, Michael. “Gender Equality: Not for Women Only” EP March 2001 http://www.eurowrc.org/06.contributions/1.contrib_en/41.contrib.en.htm Rosin, Hanna. “Who Wears the Pants in This Economy?” The New York Times August 30, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/magazine/who-wears-the-pants-in-this-economy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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