Starting Your "Work at Home Mom" Career

Becoming a work at home mom is exciting, but it is also a lot of hard work. When determining the best career path for you, take some time to explore all of your options. If you know some work at home moms, ask them about their experiences and how becoming a WAHM has affected them. If you don't know anyone personally who works from home, get active in online forums and newsgroups. The best resource for you starting out is fellow women who have done it themselves. It is also helpful to do your own research online, read books related to working at home, and investigate your local business legal requirements. Try to get a full picture of what working at home will be like before you take the plunge.

One of the first things to consider is why you are choosing to work from home. Are you interested in more flexibility? Do you want to stay home with your children, but need extra income? Or are you already a stay at home mom and want to have a professional outlet?

What income requirements do you have? Are you expecting to earn a fulltime salary, or are you hoping to make a little extra income part-time? Are you interested in starting your own business? Would you rather work for an employer or as a contractor? Weighing all of these considerations will shape your work at home venture.

It is also important to consider what professional experience you have. The most successful entrepreneurs start businesses in fields where they already have extensive experience. They are able to be successful because they know what to expect, how to complete important tasks, and have a network of colleagues and potential clients. The other advantage of staying in your previous career field is that should you later choose to go back to working in a traditional office, you will have no gaps in your resume.

Most importantly, think about what you are passionate about. Passion drives creativity and makes it easy to put in all of the hours necessary to have a successful career from home. Examine your interests and talents, then brainstorm ways that these can turn into a career.

Lastly, it is extremely important to consider the market for your product or service. You may have an idea for a business that you would really enjoy, but if there is already a great deal of competition out there, it might not be the best choice. You must find a way to make your product or service special - something people just have to have. Find your niche, then make sure that you are fulfilling a need of your potential customers. By combining your personal motivations, your skills and your clients' needs, you will find the perfect work at home career.

Kari Edmonds

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Understanding Barriers To Women's Career Progression

Never in the recent past have the debates over the matter of women's progression in their careers been as big as they are now. Nevertheless, the matter has always been discussed but not with the same intensity as it is today. With an increasing percentage of women in United States workforce (53%) in all professions, different barriers to progress have gone up.

Barriers To Women's Career Progression

Taking a holistic look at the women's career path makes clear that while most barriers are external, there some which are also internal.

Historically, male-dominated society has always viewed women as unequal and relegated women to secondary career positions. This is still being reflected in the modern skill-based job market by assigning women more and more to routine and mundane jobs that hardly carry decision-making authority. Even within new Human Resource Management processes, many processes for recruitment, interviews and aptitude tests, are sometimes centered on men rather than women.

While entry-level jobs such as teaching, healthcare and accounting are open to everyone, the dominant male population, which already occupies these jobs, leaves less room for women to enter and make a mark. Of late, the balance may be found to be shifting in favor of women, but the very nature of jobs in this category is such that women's upward mobility is far from being significant because of the fundamental and apparent lack of headroom (the glass ceiling). Women intrinsically think themselves to be at an advantage in typical jobs, which is evident from the statistics available: 53% women as opposed to 47% men. This is what can be called a socio-gender-related problem. It is gender-related because men have an advantage over women by in the types of jobs that require a lot of travel, or those which are physical in nature.

Women of substance have excelled in their independent careers. One doesn't need to look too far for names, as they are so dominant in their professions that their names could inspire those who want to tread their career paths. Why this can't be replicated in private industry? HRM practitioners complain that there is just not enough talent for the top jobs. Even organic or preferential promotions to the top jobs are almost always based on the natural progression principle.

Other areas of concern, such as maternity leave, are also hindering women's progression, although you would be hard-pressed to find an executive who would speak about this openly. Privately, many male executives cite women's lack of demonstrated willingness and courage to take bold steps as decision-makers and lack of risk-taking behavior as some of the most major psychological barriers.

In order to remove some of the physical and psychological barriers to women's career progression in private industry, a major attitudinal shift has to be made. Change will not come instantly, but over time, as society becomes more comfortable with women's increasing role in the business world.

Tony Jacowski

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Women's Career Change - Mid-Life Passage

The different life trajectories experienced by men and women especially around the physical and emotional demands of child rearing, mean that men and women often experience the arrival of mid-life in contrasting ways.

Individuals in their early forties often experience psychological changes including decreased positive self-concept stemming from social and work related changes. Both men and women may engage in "stock taking" which relates their achievements and expressed values to earlier goals, as well as questioning the meaning of life and re-examining personal values.

This reflection may inspire more attentiveness to inner concerns and may initiate a transfer of energy to more satisfying areas of life.

The demand for renewal is often triggered by some expectable motivators such as :

* Departure of children

* Career peak or plateau

* Outdating of skill set

* New responsibility for aging parents

The positive personal demands of mid-life include:

* Wishing to set one's own milestones

* Becoming active again in controlling ones future

* Acceptance of, and adjustment to, growing limits and decreasing energy levels

Sociall research by Neapolitan (1980) found that workers who made radical career changes from high level jobs at mid- life felt that they had drifted into their first occupation or had been pressured by family. They felt that the occupation either never did, or as a result of personal change, no longer expressed their values and beliefs nor did it offer a sufficient outlet or expression of their potential.

A similar study by Riverin-Simard (1990) of mid-life women and men in Montreal suggests that re-evaluating personal values can create a new or revised self-concept. This new self-view may create a mismatch between employment and personal aspirations which had not previously existed.

The positive career demands of mid-life include:

* Reappraisal of career commitment and choice

* Integration of the polarities of one's personality with work

* Appropriate modification of life structure.

Three potential avenues for change emerge from this re-evaluation:

1. Renewal of commitment to career

* Updating of skills

* Simple maintenance of skills which "hold on" to the job while effort is invested in developing new aspects of self

# Disinvestment from career in favor of relationships or outside interests and activities

# Wholesale career change.

Many individuals experiment healthily at mid-life with alternative avenues for self-expression in leisure activities or avocations and the easiest career transitions are made by individuals who have knowledge and experience of the new field through having approached it tentatively as an outside interest, a hobby or volunteer position.

When the transition requires extensive retraining, factors which enabled change include:

* Lack of financial dependants.

* Financial support from a partner.

Research cited by Bejian (1995) suggests that:

* Women who have made early choices in favor of professional careers experience similar concerns as men at mid-life regarding a desire to reinvest their energy in intimate relationships.

* Women who had made early career choices based on the needs of intimate relationships voice fears and desires at mid-life related to undeveloped aspects of their selves.

Over all, women who chose to de-emphasize their careers described the transition as less traumatic than those who chose to de-emphasize family in order to pursue new career goals.

Mid-life change poses challenges and opportunities for renewal to both men and women. Historic changes in women's opportunities and expectations have certainly occurred in our lifetimes.... but this last finding suggests that, for those of us currently entering mid-life, our experience and aspirations continue to be somewhat shadowed by the lives and attitudes of the parents who raised us...parents who themselves came to maturity in the climate and attitudes and beliefs about separate male and female roles which characterized the 1940's and 50's.

It seems that the personal demand for self-actualization which arises at mid-life for women still does not sit easily with us.

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