New group has a positive approach to jobs for women

Press, 13 March 1985, Page 12

New group has a positive approach to jobs for women

LYN HOLLAND

talks to some of the women

behind the Canterbury Women’s Employment Trust. They aim to help women help themselves, and each other.

A garage and a herb farm, both run by women, are among the plans of a Christchurch group concerned about women’s employment. The Canterbury Women’s Employment Trust began last year. A group of women from a variety of professions had become increasingly concerned about paid employment opportunities for women.

They aim to help expand those opportunities by providing training in non-tradi-tional jobs, and encouraging women to be self-sufficient. Members will also articulate women’s employment needs.

What are those needs? Lucy Sandford, one of the group, believes they are no different from the things men want from paid employment: “To get money, to achieve individual social worth and social contact.” What is different is the

common expectation about women’s roles: that their main role is caring for children, and that they are a useful, but expendable, “reserve” in the paid workforce.

When men return from war, or the economy tightens, it is women who are expected to relinquish their paid employment.

With quality childcare costly and hard to find, and with little social support for shared parenting, women are forced to “slot in” their employment needs between caring for their children, says Jan Andrews, one of the trust’s paid workers.

Such attitudes are difficult to change. They start in childhood and are reinforced in classrooms, homes, unions, and workplaces, say the trustees.

Change will take time.

The trust believes it is necessary to see the deep roots of the problems. It is also trying to continue “picking up the pieces,” giving practical help to women who want it now and cannot wait for society to change. It cannot offer women jobs, but hopes to be more than just another group saying, “we know it is like,” she says. One of the trust’s plans for immediate help is a garage run by women. The aim of the project is to teach women non-tradi-tional skills such as motor mechanics’.

It has been offered a suitable garage which trustees hope to buy. The owner (a male) has offered to initially teach women the necessary skills. Now the trust is looking for women willing to collectively run the garage for at least five years. The trust is also hoping to

establish a pre-apprentice-ship introduction to motor mechanics, to give women a competitive edge when they apply for mechanical apprenticeships — an edge men already have from years of “tinkering around with dad’s car.” The courses would not just be for women who want to go on to a full mechanic’s apprenticeship. They would be useful if they only taught a woman to change a spark plug and keep a car on the road, points out Lucy Sandford.

Every woman is not ex-

pected to want to wield a wrench. “We are not saying all women must be in paid work, and all children must be in child care. What we want is to create the environment of choice.” A herb and gardening cooperative is also planned. Two women are already looking at a possible site. They believe that the market for organically grown vegetables and herbs is increasing. A calendar of women in non-traditional activities is another of the trust’s plans

to give support for such women while also raising some much-needed funds. Although the trust hopes to facilitate projects which make profits, it is unlikely to generate its own income. At present it relies on grants from the Department of Internal Affairs, and Department of Labour schemes. Day-to-day funding is a problem. It may consider seeking regular contributions from supporters. The group’s task is made easier by the training of the 12 trustees. They are all

professional women who can ease access to "the system,” and make projects more acceptable to official approval, says Lucy Sandford. “Often we can help through the system projects that may have stumbled by the wayside.” They have taken on a big job. They acknowledge that by quoting Labour Department statistics: 50 per cent of women are found in only six occupations; nearly half of all women earn less than $2OOO a year, while only 1.8 per cent earn between $16,000 and $25,000.

In part-time jobs, traditionally less secure and less well-paid than full-time jobs 82.5 per cent of the workers are women. The trust is slowly building up a network of contacts among Christchurch women, and trade unions. Another of the trustees, Sue Odlin, believes it will take at least two years to get it fully established. New ideas will be formed, others may be dropped as idealism is combined with reality to ensure that women do not lose out. That happens too often, declares Sue Odlin.