A YW Career Night

My sister – who was a journalist before she became a lawyer served as co-leader for activity days for the preteen girls. Her co-leader told the girls that they should get as much education as they can so that they can better teach their children/help them with home work and just in case your spouse dies suddenly.

She was surprised that this is still taught in this day and age.

We no longer teach that it is wrong for a woman to work outside the home as it is a financial necessity for so many of our members. However, for a woman to pursue a career voluntarily is something that we are very comfortable with. (I should add that there are some careers that we are much more comfortable with women having and others … not so much).

I’m old enough to have gotten the old-school full treatment in YW. And one of my few serious regrets in life is that I didn’t deliberately do better for my own girls. I let the still-predominant church culture message be the message they got. A lot of girls are going to look back, like the BCC commenter does, and say, “Why did I listen to them?”

aspiringmormonwomen.org is a cool site. I vote for them to help overhaul the YW curriculum.

Don’t be too hard on yourself.

Even as a guy I like Aspiring Mormon Women.

A YW career night that featured a school teacher, a hair dresser, and a paralegal. Huh. Talk about stereotypes.

Those are all wonderful professions, but each woman admitted that she made a poor choice in that she focused on education as a “back up plan” instead of a primary plan. I find it interesting that they didn’t bring in a school principal, a movie set designer, and a litigator. They didn’t bring in women who were pleased with their level of education and accomplishments. They didn’t bring in women who were making 6 or 7 figure incomes.

The people they brought in were women — who by their own admissions — had settled on education, degrees, and positions that were less than their full potential.

Imagine if the YM had a career fair and they brought 3 poorly educated and under-employed men to talk to the YM. That wouldn’t happen.

People learn from example. All the studies show that people will mimic what they know. If you want youth to accomplish great things, you show them inspirational examples. If you want to appear as if you are promoting careers for the YW, but you really want them to be SAHMs, you show them women who have not accomplished fame, financial independence, or reached the upper echelons of their professions.

I knew someone who grew up poor but she had every opportunity for higher education. She chose to complete only an associates degree and married a poor provider. Years later, someone asked her why she had made such choices as she had her impoverished growing-up experience as a obvious lesson on what NOT to do. She reply, “It was all I knew. It was the pattern I was familiar with.”

Let’s show our YW some positive and successful patterns of achievement. Let’s show them women who did not settle for a back-up plan type of profession or education.

I like the idea of a career night. Is there any reason why we might not want to invite some men and women from the ward to talk about their career paths? I am just wondering if there is a reason why only women seem to be invited to speak. :

I wonder if I explained myself well in this question. Suppose there is a man that works as a Veterinarian and lives in the ward. Would he be a good choice to do a presentation on his field to the YW? What are the pros and cons of inviting someone from the opposite gender of the audience?

I guess I am just imagining that we as a church want to show the YW women that have chosen family friendly careers. Does that make sense? It has the feel of… this is what you can do in addition to being a mother. Am I off base here?

Too often, I see our YW pushed towards careers that are lower paying as a way to force them into a SAHM roll. A dear friend’s daughter wanted to go to medical school. The parents did all in their power to discourage their daughter. When they proudly told me that they had succeeded, I was stunned. That daughter could’ve worked 2 mornings a week as a physician and made more money than working 80 hours a week at minimum wage. The parents have forced her into a role of SAHM. She is financially trapped.

More to the point, this leaves a lot of women financially trapped in bad marriages because they have no means of supporting themselves and the children once they find out that the RM everybody else thinks can walk on water is a very different person behind closed doors.

Here’s why LDS Trump supporters scare the crap out of me. There is a strong correlation between Trump supporters and hostile sexism. While many Mormons are ‘old-fashioned’ benevolent sexists, putting women on a pedestal, there are also plenty of hostile sexists, too. Those are the ones who have strong feelings of resentment toward women, groups like men’s rights activists. I wish I could say I’ve never met a Mormon like this, but I have even heard a youth speaker say in a talk over the pulpit that the boys in Steubenville had their bright futures ruined by girls’ accusations. True story. That’s what hostile sexism looks like.

http://www.vox.com/2016/11/1/13480416/trump-supporters-sexism

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming….

The discussion is about YW career night and career options.

FWIW, one of the counselors in our stake RSP is a single professional woman in her 30s, and we previously had a divorced single mother, also a professional, in that position. The former was released to be YWP in her ward. One of the counselors in the stake Primary presidency is also a single (divorced, childless) professional woman.