Why i'm talking about careers

Hi everyone

This week I'm planning my objectives and goals for the year. I've got four key themes in mind at the moment. They are Health, Careers, Security and Multi-culturalism. my task for this week is to narrow them down into three key areas that I can measure and work towards this year.

I'm really adamant on focussing on careers this year, and I'm currently going about setting up a women's employment event .This will hopefully include workshops and inspirational speakers. The aim of the event is to give female Sheffield graduates the best chance of getting a job when they leave Sheffield. Graduating in a recession is difficult enough but for women gaining a high profile pr well paid job can be even more problematic. The pay gap is currently at 17% and in financial areas, for example, the city of London this figure has leapt to 60%. Raising awareness of the pay gap is important but I've been asking myself what we can realistically do to tackle it.

Research indicates that these figures are connected to the type of work and industries women are involved in. For this reason I'm hoping to raise interest and engagement with typically high paid male dominated industries, such as scinece , engineering , technology and political representation. Raising the number of women in these industries will go some way to tackle misconceptions about which types of job are 'women's work' and which are 'mens work'.

I'm also really interested in reseraching companies with good practice with regards to child care. Some companies allow parents to share childcare between the mother and father in which ever way the parents see fit. this si inseatd of the normal allocation of a certain amount of leave to the mother and the statutory two weeks to the father. I personaly feel that removing the perception that women are 'natural' child carers is a positive step for both men and women. Steps like this allow men acess to their children and give them the right to be a child carer too. Measures like this also remove the bias against recruiting young women which Sir Alan Sugar famously admitted to himself. Young women can find themselves refused a job because their employers fear that they may get pregnant and take too much time off. With men and women sharing chilcare equally employers cannot discriminate on gender grounds.