Women's education & careers - the hidden agenda

Women's liberation, feminism and gender equality are terms which have been bandied around for decades, yet have women's roles in society really changed? Where are the executive business women in Corporate Affairs? Where are all the female Principals in schools? Why are girls still opting for subject choices and careers in only five main areas, such as community services, retail trade and property? Why are women leaving successful careers to have children and then opting for lesser part-time work? Why are women still working in low paid sex-segregated jobs earning less than their male counterparts? Why are women choosing to do the majority of housework? Are the nineties the decade of true equality? What hidden agenda prevents women from achieving their potential in education and careers? This study will explore the research on women, their careers and educational opportunities which reveals that in Australia's sex-segregated society they are a very unequal part. It reveals that women's hidden agenda lies in their dual roles of performing unpaid work in the home, rearing children and working in salutary low paid sex-segregated areas of employment. Society's social construction of gendered roles for women and men is examined in terms of their being in direct opposition to one another, with the emphasis of the private sphere of the home dominating women's lives and the public sphere of paid work dominating men's lives. (Connell, 1987, Oakley, 1990, Sampson, 1991, and Maclean, 1992)