Hot opportunity

I am often accused of being a “glass nearly full” type. So do take that into account as I tell you why I became very excited when reading an alarming statistic on the weekend about Gen X professional women.

The alarming statistic was this. You know those women aged 30 years plus who graduated en masse from our universities and were going to take the business world by storm by now? A long running study by the University of Melbourne shows that while these women had ambitions for full-time careers at university, most are now working part-time or not at all.

The findings from the study called Life Patterns shows that only 38% of Gen X tertiary qualified women work full-time compared to 90% of Gen X tertiary educated men.

What is depressing is that when the study was begun in the early 90s, young women who had gained qualifications were the most likely of any social group to rate “gaining a career position” as their top priority. And worse, it was women with tertiary qualifications who were the most likely of any group to not be in the workforce.

That would lead one to surmise that by the time these women hit the mummy years, they were in mid-level positions in large and small businesses and found the stress of combining full-time work with running a household too much to bear.

So the lack of family friendly workplaces was blamed and we can throw in some other suspects: poor child care, some Aussie men shunning housework and baby duties,
and so on.

So why did I get excited? There was a big feature article on the survey in The Sunday Age which had resisted the usual temptation to find a few women who had dropped out to illustrate the story.

Instead they found six women who had forged new paths, all of them combining motherhood with work.

This was presented as successful women finding inspirational new lifestyles.

But what was incredibly exciting for me is that each of the women presented in this story were actually building a new venture – or had the capacity to do so. Take one 34 year old who dreamt of being an interior designer at 18. She is now running her own online broking business.

Or a 39 year old who trained in sales and management roles. She now has equity in an IT company and is a director of sales.

As I read on I got more excited. Whether these women know it or not, each of them by the time they are 50 could be running very successful businesses. And you know what? I reckon they will.

From the Gen X women I meet, the research I look at and the anecdotal stories passed on through mummy blogs and the wildly active female networks, I think we are going to see a generation of women maybe not storming large companies, but becoming very successful entrepreneurs.

I did it myself. I was a typical part timer (four days a week) but even while I was employed, I worked in the evenings and on my day off on building other skills.

Then once the kids were at high school, I went for it and started my own business.

The stressful experience of combining motherhood with maintaining a career while building new skills got me ready for battle. It taught resilience, multi-tasking and patience (no one will agree with the latter), sharpening my social intelligence and my strategic skills.

It got me battle ready and turned me into a fighter.

So don’t write off Gen Y professional women. They are just getting started. And like me, have decades left in which to launch and build new ventures.

And with that new breed of women will come a host of opportunities for business providers.

They will want to do things differently – they already are.