Empowering the mindset of the career-driven woman
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My mum turns 80 in a couple of weeks. When I see her, I want to ask her a question I’ve always both wanted and not wanted to know the answer to.
When we were growing up, was she unfulfilled?
Mum is a product of her age. She was in her mid-30s when I was born and a stay-at-home mum across all my childhood years. Her return to work was when an emergency vacancy came up at the Before and After School centre I worked for.
Later she ended up employed alongside my dad driving customers cars back and forth for Lexus. She and my father know all the secret routes of Sydney. They are also the best relationship role models I’ll ever know.
Irrespective, although she sang and volunteered and was part of the school canteen and had an active social life, I still wonder if she was bored? The question stems from me placing myself in her shoes—I would have been.
While I am heading towards meeting my parents halfway in their marriage milestone, I’ve had ten times the number of jobs. I can put some of them down to a better opportunity presenting itself or a partner-driven location change but, fundamentally, many of my decisions too come down to boredom and feeling unfulfilled.
This week someone on social media shared an article from the Harvard Business Review called If You Can’t Find a Spouse Who Supports Your Career, Stay Single. I think we’ve all read or watched something that feels like it was directly aimed at us. This was that article for me.
Firstly, this is not about my husband, or my relationship with him. He’s a good man who shares the family load. This is about me. Somewhat selfishly, but unashamedly.
In the last couple of years, now that my children are more independent (ten plus) and I can plan my days with more ease, I have made decisions on my working life that aren’t based solely on the good of the family but rather on the good of me.
More specifically, they are what I want to do.
Here I am, forty plus, after thirty years of working pretty much nonstop, finally, FINALLY, working in roles where I cannot wait to get to work despite the alarm going off at 3.45 am. Where I left the weekend voice-over class I taught on a physical high and a bear hug.
I’ve never worked so hard nor felt so certain that I am doing what I was born to do. I’ve also never gone so long between visits to seek.com.au.
It always astonishes me when I meet people who have never contemplated a job or career change as an option. A friend of mine has worked in one profession and one place that largely leaves them unhappy across their career. Their motives are to provide for their family and pay the bills. I think they could earn more and perhaps find a place more suited to them relatively easily. They’ve never even used a job search engine.
I’m the person who starts hunting for the next role when I start to feel dissatisfied in the current one. I give good interview and I’m always open to change. I’ve had a couple of, well…moments really, where I’ve had to stay somewhere because I’ve financially needed to, but I’ve always moved quickly to seek out something or anything else.
I’ve done a lot of “anything else”. I’ve cried in the bathtub because my anything else option made me feel like shit. I’ve felt like my life is passing in front of me without me actively participating. I hate that feeling.
Recently I worked with a colleague who has two children under five. Like me, she’s podcasting on the side. Like me also she’s worked jobs just to get by. When we met, her role was enough for now. Just.
Does being a mum, loving your kids, wanting to be present in their lives and maintain your relationship with your partner mean “enough for now” can become “this is what it is”, which incidentally is verbatim how another female friend described her job?
The Harvard Business Review article talks about how in the past the man’s career was the priority in the family dynamic. They earned more money and the women’s time was better spent in the home nurturing and maybe working part-time or full time when the kids were older.
Many relationships would fall apart once the children left home and one or both in the relationship has the midlife crisis where they wonder if the best part of their lives have simply passed them by.
The early part of the 21st century has seen women returning to and redefining our meaningful work. This decade is about men accepting that.
For a relationship to succeed they need to hear that while we love our roles as mothers, partners and part of a family—that we also want and need to have a financial outlet outside of that that allows us an independence separate to those relationships.
Let’s be real here—one in three marriages ends in divorce. The mostly-stay-at-home mum has, generally speaking, neither the resources nor the long term work background to financially flourish if their relationship suddenly breaks down.
Homeless women over forty-five represent one of the fastest-growing groups in Australia. Women escaping violent and abusive relationships are either happening more frequently or more is being reported on them.
It is mighty hard to financially flourish when you may be escaping with the clothes on your back or left with half of a mortgage, half of the child care and half of a full-time job.
On the other side of things, more seats are being made available for women at the table. And more women are pursuing their side hustles and passion projects around their other stable incomes. Some are making that side hustle their full-time job.
I have my feet in both camps. I did give up a poorly paying and below my experience full-time job when COVID hit but I had the security of my husband’s income. We discussed at that time what I needed to bring in as a minimum for us to survive.
I then took a full time (and fortuitous) “it’ll do” job. Maybe it’s my age or maybe it’s that realisation that you only get one shot at this thing called life, but I also went gung-ho at the side hustle.
That side hustle, teaching podcasting and voice-over, is immensely COVID adaptable. I exceeded my family breakeven minimum and accompanied that with a full-time job offer that was a childhood dream come true.
These last three weeks I have worked across the full-time role and three contracts. I’m exhausted but creatively, professionally and joyfully fulfilled. But I want this and I want this to continue.
At home, my work is starting to meet and perhaps overshadow my husband’s. We’ve always tended to share, and this is the first time where we both have roles that we strongly feel matter. In the past, I may have backed down, particularly if I was earning less or if the children’s needs were greater, but now I don’t and won’t.
We’re currently negotiating our hectic work schedules and external commitments around our kids and the time we get together. So far, so good. Until the cricket season starts…
The bottom line for me is that if—big if—I was to go solo tomorrow, then my income would matter. I’d like it also to be income that I derive pleasure from earning.
I’m not thinking this way as a portent of doom, but I’d like for every woman to take this approach into their relationships, family and future planning as if—big if—it happens to you then you have something that still gives you value, something that has a purpose and hopefully something that genuinely does pay your bills with some leftovers.
The hard part for many men in accepting this is that acting in such a way sometimes almost feels like we’ve created for ourselves an exit strategy if need be. It also appears like we don’t need them as the primary earner anymore.
The truth is we don’t but that’s a hundred-odd years of learned behaviour to unlearn. They’ve been the breadwinner—they’ve had the unconscious exit strategy.
We can both meet at the table as equals. Neither of us then gets stuck in work or relationships we don’t need to be in. If either of us leaves then it is to a level playing field rather than one financially skewed in any direction.
For my mum, she’s been very fortunate to have had a happy marriage where this consequence has never troubled her, but yet I still want to ask her the question.
I hope my own children, two sons, see just how happy and settled it makes me to have such a vividly active working life and will encourage their future partners to seek and be the same.
Photography: Tracey Murray at Tracey Murray Photography
