ABSTRACT
What kind of career do you dream about? Do imagine yourself as a lawyer fighting for issues of equality? Or a diplomat? Or an artist? Or some combination of all three? In Chapter 4, you took some time assessing your interests, skills, and strengths in Women’s and Gender Studies. We hope that you came away from that chapter eager to find out more about how others have used their degrees in obtaining employment and developing satisfying careers. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the range of career pathways and employment opportunities that WGST students have pursued over the past 15 years. In this chapter, we also introduce you to a diverse number of employment sectors, some that you may not have considered before. We think it is important for you to be informed about the great breadth of employment sectors in thinking about what interests you. We also highlight graduates’ experiences in law, higher education administration, the health professions, academe, and entrepreneurship as many in our survey worked in those arenas. Taking time in this chapter to identify some key areas of interest should spark curiosity and raise areas of discovery you may not have thought of before when thinking about career options. We hope to encourage a sense of wonder (as opposed to dread), when thinking about the kinds of jobs and careers that you might pursue. There’s so much to explore! Career Services Resources on the Web
As you read through this book, you have gotten some tasty hints of what skills you are developing while pursuing your degree, and some areas that you may want to explore in terms of jobs and careers. In Chapter 2, Katharine Brooks provided some perspective on approaching career services, the value of a liberal arts degree, and ways to approach employers. Before, during, and after visiting your campus’s career services office, you may want to do your homework and utilize the resources that are currently on the Web. For example, the University of California Berkeley’s Career Center website (University of California Berkeley 2014) has some great resources regarding internships and graduate school, as well as links to explore career options. With topics such as “career fields,” “What can I do with a major in …” and “employer and industry guides,” these resources may illuminate career fields you may have never considered, and also allow you to brush up on the best way to present the knowledge and skills you possess. For example, the section “Architecture, Planning and Environmental Design” is broken down into a variety of subsections, including career profiles and guides—”Inside Jobs” is an interactive website that allows you to choose an area of interest (job category and what are you good at)—and see different jobs and the training/experience that is needed (with a Berkeley graduate picture beside it). Additionally, this section also lists student organizations for the career field and a listing of the field’s professional organizations. If you are a student at UC Berkeley, you have additional opportunities to reference materials that list alumni and the career paths they have chosen. You may want to check with your own university to see if similar resources are available.
Another website that has information about employment options is Everyday Feminism (https://www.everydayfeminism.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://everydayfeminism.com). In particular, Melissa Fabello’s (2014) article “So You Want a Feminist Job” offers five ideas for looking for a feminist job (e.g. “Narrow down feminism” and look in the right places) (Fabello 2014). Other helpful articles on this website for maintaining oneself (and perspective) in the job search include “How to Weather Post College Unemployment” (Slavin 2013) and “Gainful Unemployment: 5 Acts of Self Care While Job Hunting” (Uwujaren 2012). Additionally, the section on work offers support and resources for those in careers/jobs that may be fulfilling in some ways but problematic in others (Adamson 2013; Kim 2013). You will find more resources as you start exploring the Web. As you encounter these sites, you may want to bookmark them and share them with others in your network. Often, what may be helpful to you will be helpful to someone else. Later, he or she may “pay it forward” and help you (or someone else) on the career path.
