AWE Journal – Girls Work: Careers

Linda Oakley
Guest Editor

Welcome to AWE members and readers of Redress to yet another engaging issue. This time we are revisiting the still unresolved question of girls and their career choices, with articles not only describing the situation as they see it, but also offering some potential—if not solutions then attempts—to challenge imbalance in gender-based career choice.

Dr Carole Ford explores gender stereotyping by discussing some of the results of her research and the implications for educators working in primary education. Her article is a timely reminder that career paths are often forged much earlier than the later high school years.

Jenine Beekhuyzen from Griffith University, Brisbane, and Iwona Miliszewska and Aidan Moore from Victoria University, Melbourne, entice us to think more deeply about the issue of girls and ICT, from the perspective of intervention programs aimed at girls about to leave school, and by ideas for assisting secondary teachers, educational authorities, the ICT industry and ICT policy developers, to attract more girls to ICT studies.

Included also is a handy chart (and website details) providing a summary of research into non-traditional career preparation, and in addition, a report presented last year at Griffith University and funded by Economic Security 4 Women (eS4W), on Indigenous women’s employment issues in urban Queensland.

Happy New Year and happy reading!