3 Best Jobs for Mums Eager to Jump-Start Their Careers

While many mums are eager to join or rejoin the workforce, they also find it intimidating to jump-start their careers. They feel rusty and unsure exactly how they may be able to add value. However, this hasn’t stopped them from pursuing their careers and ambitions. 53% of Aussie mums are working and nearly 7% are self-employed.

If you are looking for a new career path after a bit of hiatus, don’t you worry. We need mums to join the workforce and push the continuously decreasing gender gap, especially in leadership positions. We need the women to rise up to squeeze out the remaining gender pay gap of 13.9% (as of November 2019), following the largest single-year drop of 21.3% in 2018.

Despite a continued commitment from corporations, female presence becomes harder and harder to find as you move up the ladder. There are some fields where you rarely see women at all such as software engineering or sales. On the flip side, there are some fields that boast strong makeup of high-powered women in leadership. Here are 3 best jobs we believe provide solid paths to the top for women and provide support to help them fulfil motherly duties without sacrificing their careers.

1. Nursing

About 80 per cent of nurses are women. Nurses are always in high demand. NSW was only about to fill 49% of the nursing vacancies in 2019 and VIC about 71%. This trend is now worse than ever due to the pandemic and surge of patients in need of care. Nurses assess the status of each patient and often need to make quick medical decisions. They see the patients from intake until recovery and have in-depth knowledge about health management that even doctors will not necessarily possess.

Hence, nurses have a lot of influence in the clinical spheres. Hospital management often includes Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) in their executive team and nurses are involved in many key decisions such as patient management, medical devices, pharmaceutical provisions, and operational efficiency across all patient interactions. In the United States, there are 33 hospital CEOs who came from nursing. Nurses often move into non-hospital senior leadership roles such as health departments in the government.

If you want to pursue this path to healthcare executive, you should explore higher education in advanced nursing for registered nurses to further strengthen your qualifications. Your earning potential will also dramatically increase with an advanced degree or specialisation.

2. Marketing

Nearly half of the open Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) positions were taken by women the first half of 2019, setting a new record. While the Marketing/PR industry boasts a stronger female presence in the leadership, it is still way below 50%. It is estimated that female customers will control up to 75% of global spending by 2028 and having a female perspective in the marketing and branding strategy will be essential to customer acquisition.

Scientific studies of gender differences indicate that women’s brains are generally better built for communication as testosterone surge found in male bodies (as they go through puberty) destroy cells in the part of the brain that facilitate effective communication. Expressing empathy thus often comes more naturally to girls than boys. This intuitive ability to connect with others’ emotions allows compelling positioning of the brands’ narratives. This doesn’t mean men are going to be less successful in this field. It simply means that the innate qualities found in many women could serve as great strengths in a marketer.

 3. Government Representatives

Only 24 per cent of parliamentarians in the world are women. Rwanda is way ahead of the pack with 61.3% of lower house representatives taken by females. The rise in female participation in politics is long overdue. The most notable trend is in the U.S. where 4 progressive female congresswomen gained notoriety as ‘the Squad’ amidst continued political tension following the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York and was a part-time waitress when she was running for Congress in 2018.

In Australia, 23% of the Liberal ranks and 47% of the Labor ranks are taken by women. The government is still very much of a boys’ club. Despite women making up 50.2 per cent of the overall Australian population, the government body does not reflect the makeup of the citizen population they serve. There’s a growing and louder acknowledgement that gender equality is urgently needed in the government. Women are desperate for their voices to be heard and need to be represented properly to ensure thriving societal progression and increase in happiness.