Lifestyle Choices

Training: If you have had training you can probably find job opportunities through your professional body or through reading or advertising in your professional journal.

Assuming that you haven’t had any training prior to marriage and aren’t coping with pre-school age children, what is available? Most women are unskilled. Only 6 per cent receive any further training when they leave school. However, there are suitable training courses for `mature students’, the official description of any woman over twenty- three. You can exploit a talent which you already possess and are practising in your home (sewing or cooking) or be trained by a firm who wishes to employ you, or at one of the many courses at a local technical college. Generally what is difficult to acquire isn’t really the training, or even the job, but the determination to forget embarrassment, laziness or shyness — and go out and get it.

Get advice from your local employment agencies and watch the columns vacant in your local press. Don’t mind taking a low wage to get some fast experience, or to get your foot in the door. And once you have discovered how your job is done, you might improve on it and get promotion, or even start your own business.

For instance, Freelance Work for Women Bureau was started by a married woman who needed a job. I know a divorced woman with two teenage children who took a part- time typing job at one of the best secretarial schools in Britain and became the principal within two years. They seemed ordinary housewives — but they had never before tried to be anything else!

Twinning. National Westminster Bank are pioneers in this field, where two friends share one job, such as cashier, and do a full-time fortnight each. Get your twin before approaching an employer, appear together at the interview and explain how you will tackle the drawbacks. Don’t both talk at once.

Getting a job

Here are a few ideas :

Beauty therapy: Visiting people in their own homes or in hospitals or having them come to your home.

Travelling sewing machine consultant.

Travelling sales consultant for beauty products, a fast-growing field. A tactful woman can be really helpful.

Travelling representative for a wig manufacturer or a corset iere. Can be quite exciting: all you need is a deep breath and a brass nerve.

Demonstrator of appliances at exhibitions, stores or showrooms.

Cooking weekday meals for an office, factory or boardroom.

Cooking evening meals in other people’s homes.

Cooking or serving school meals.

Gardening in a market garden or nursery. Or starting your own window box servicing business, like another friend of mine.

Working in a florist, if you don’t mind getting up early and have a flair for flowers. Susan, Lady Pulbrook, a brilliant florist who works for Buckingham Palace, started because she was lonely after her husband died.

Alocal government job: There is scope for women in welfare, child care and education. There are day release classes and training schemes.

Market research: Interviewers and research assistants are needed; married women and part-time workers are welcome. You need a neat, cheerful appearance and good handwriting. Plenty of training schemes.

Freelance journalism for newspapers or magazines. (Well, I’m doing it.)

Interviewer on TV or radio.

Nursing, if you have the Florence Nightingale temperament and strong feet. The Department of Health offers training to older women because there is serious understaffing in hospitals.

Nursing auxiliaries help nurses with their basic duties without the long training of a qualified nurse.

Midwifery: A woman with no nursing qualifications can take a two- year course up to the age of fifty. What could be more satisfying? And a mother has one pretty essential qualification. When trained, she will know what she’s talking about. She’s already had at least nine months’ experience. Apply to your local Regional Hospital Board for details.

Office work: Just look at the shortage of secretaries! Every firm needs them. Offices often prefer an older responsible, reliable woman. You then have your pick of jobs, at home or outside it, one, two, three, four or five days a week, mornings only or afternoons only. Very flexible. Pitmans training is considered best. Your local educational officer can advise on others.

Schools often employ part-time secretaries who work only in term time.

Receptionist: There are plenty of opportunities in big cities, and, again, friendly, responsible, reliable women are increasingly preferred to young dollies.

Telephonist: ditto.

Clerical work: The Civil Service recruits up to the age of sixty, and they are probably going to start new working programmes to suit married women. Get the address of your local government offices from your post office.

Office machine operators for duplicating machines, adding and calculating machines and computers. There is a great shortage of computer staff and much of the work is taken on part-time or freelance by married women.

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