Training a New Female Work Force

Sometimes it seems that until a problem has a name, nothing is done to solve it. At least that's seemed to happen to women who needed help learning to support themselves after having been dependent on their spouses.

Until the mid-1970s when the term "displaced homemakers" was coined, few official programs existed to help these women adjust to reentering the work force.

But in the last 10 years, more than 1000 programs, both privately and federally funded, have sprung up across the country to provide aid, education and support.

Radcliffe College's Discovery program, which began last spring, is just one of these projects. Conceived about three years ago, the program tries to provide women who must return to the work force with the skills necessary to find lucrative employment, says Phyllis Strimling, director of the program.

The business-oriented program begins with a semester of specially structured classes designed to ease the students--ranging in age from late 20s to early 60s--back into the educational process. Discovery participants then enter Radcliffe's regular Business Management Seminars Program and work towards a certificate of advanced studies in management.

Funded entirely by private sources, including a grant from the Jessie B. Cox Foundation in Boston, Discovery pays all tuition costs for its students, and applicants must demonstrate financial need.

Under the supervision of the Radcliffe Seminar Office--in the Cronkhite Graduate Center--the Discovery program meets once a week during the spring semester. Last February, the first group of 20 women began studying communications, accounting and marketing. They also had the option of taking special writing workshops.

The first semester is especially crucial because Discovery seeks to provide these displaced home-makers with the confidence and support that they need to become self-supporting, as well as improved job skills.

This fall all 20 students entered the regular business management program. "It was just wonderful [this fall] to see these women who had come here looking over their shoulders wondering if they belonged here being positive about the educational programs, and meeting their peers," says Strimling.

"They began with some trepidation this year because this was the real thing. But they're here," she says.

Designed for women with some post-high school education, the program seeks applicants who are able to study at a college level or higher.

"We want women to know it's a challenging program academically. We look carefully; it's very selective," says Audrey Smith-Whitaker, who is in charge of recruiting for the program.

Many of the students have completed college but have not used their academic skills in a number of years because they were supported by their husbands.

Because she was not encouraged to look toward a career in college, Discovery student Carol Couture says, "I got a B.A. in psych, and the degree means nothing. The program [at Radcliffe] is specifically geared toward management which is a higher paying field, and, to me, it's so applicable to the everyday working situation."

Nineteen of the first 20 students are divorced, separated or widowed, while the other participant has a disabled spouse.

At the suggestion of the Jessie B. Cox Foundation, Discovery makes a special effort to reach out to minority groups in its recruiting process, Strimling says.

"We had hoped 50 percent [of participants] would be women of color," says Newell Flather, a spokesman for the foundation. Of 20 students in last year's first Discovery class, eight were members of minority groups.

Although the Discovery program is unusual in its focus on business management, it is following in a line of organizations and programs that have being started nationwide to help women returning to work.

"As time has gone on, women have not been able to stay home for 15 to 20 years," says Donna LeClair, director of the Bay State Centers for Displaced Homemakers, which serves more than 2500 of Massachusetts' 310,000 displaced women annually.

"Even if you worked part-time, employers don't look at that in the same way as working 40 hours a week," LeClair says.

Many displaced homemakers--of whom there are currently more than 11 million nationwide--did not fit into the groups aided by state or federal programs until the national and state networks for these women were created in the late 1970s, organizers say.

The category of "displaced homemakers" came to national recognition in 1978 when two California women, Laurie Shields and Tish Sommers, organized the first national convention, held in Baltimore, for women reentering the work force. In 1979, the Displaced Homemakers National Network was established, says Jean Cilik, program assistant for the network's central office in Washington D.C.

The whole movement took off in the 1970s, when two California women [Shields and Sommers], one divorced and one widowed, realized that there were no resources out there for them," says LeClair. "They were too old for youth programs, too young for Social Security. They weren't poor enough for welfare, but they had barely enough money to support themselves."

The national network acts as a coordinating agency for programs across the country and lobbies for groups that require funding on a federal level, Cilik says. The groups offer a wide variety of services, from job retraining to counseling to daycare. "We call it a movement because once there was a name given to the movement it mobilized the situation," Cilik says.

The problems of returning to work have grown more serious in recent years because of rapid technological advances. New skills are necessary--such as computer literacy--so it has become increasingly more difficult for women re-entering the work force to find jobs. "Jobs are going to become more technical. There needs to be some kind of training," Cilik says.

Training is not all these women need. Building the confidence of these women is one of the main goals of state and national programs. Although it is privately funded, Discovery is directed toward fulfilling the same goals.

Women in the program say it has increased their self-confidence and their abilities in the workplace while helping them move toward their long-term career plans.

"My life turned 180 degrees around," when she found out about displaced homemaker programs, says Marcia L. Mason, 56, a Discovery student who is concurrently writing a masters' thesis at Vermont College.

Another member of the program, Lischen Singare, says that when one becomes self-supporting, "You're trying to swim and you might sink or drown. You really do need support when you're on your own." Singare--who has two young children--has begun her own business marketing educational materials that have a multi-cultural emphasis. She says the courses she has taken at Radcliffe have facilitated her endeavors.

"I had taken a business course [elsewhere]," Singare says. But she adds that the Radcliffe program has been indispensible because it has given her an overall picture of business management methods. "You're able to see how you fit into the larger picture, and you have to be cognizant of that," she says.

Participants in Discovery agree that it has fulfilled a need for women in today's society. "There is a big need, but people just never cared [before] because [women] have always been the underdogs," Couture says.

"The most striking thing to me about the management program was that as women we've been locked into low-paying fields," says Couture, adding that the program has widened her business skills and made her more confident in the workplace. Couture, who has a six-year-old son, is planning to apply for a job as family day care coordinator in her town. She says the job appeals to her because it would combine her varied interests of social service, psychology and management.

Participants emphasize the value of the peer support they have received from other members of the program. "It's broadened my eyes into seeing the support that a bunch of women can offer other women," says Discovery student Lori Barton-Wilkins.

Barton-Wilkins adds that although she had a job as marketing manager in Grimes Oil Company when she entered the program, she sees Discovery as way of bettering her credentials for future employment options.

"I knew with additional credentials I could do a lot more [for my family]," adds Barton-Wilkins, who has three children, two of whom are in college. "Too often you take positions that aren't commensurate with your skills and abilities. It's important to have a good perspective on yourself and what you want to do," she adds.

Mason agrees that the program has helped her further her long-term goal to establish of a women's peace institute where women would be able to study techniques of non-violence and work toward furthering world peace.

"We want to be able to turn the power structure around," says Mason, who is writing her masters thesis on the creation of the institute. "Not put the women on top, but put [shift the power structure] a little bit to the side," so that men and women will be more equal, she says.

"The present system we live in is a male-dominated system. It's hierarchical. When women are left in change of things, they have a horizontal structure, a circular structure. The power is shared," Mason adds.

Because the peace institute will be directed toward helping women be self-sufficient economically and emotionally, it shares many of Discovery's goals, Mason says. "Everything I do in the Discovery program is hand in glove with my studies."