In-house or Out-house Training - The Implications for Women

Moderator:
Carol Armatage, Systems Training
Officer

Panelists:
Sher Anderson, Women's
Employment Coordinator, CEIC,
Saskatchewan

Deanna Melnychuk, Manager,
Office Services Group, Northern
Telecom

When offered through the employer, training tends to be defined narrowly, according to immediate needs. Consequently, it is not easily transferable to other organizations. Frequently geared to management candidates, it is dominated by male attitudes and excludes most women. The problem is compounded by women's tendency to avoid training for a number of reasons, one of which is math anxiety. Finally, in-house training is directly linked to the financial status of the enterprise: when times are bad, training opportunities are dropped, or seriously curtailed.

Out-house training presents another set of disadvantages. For example, it is almost impossible for schools to forecast needs. As a result, training is frequently obsolete. Full-time day courses are cost-prohibitive and the waiting lists are endless. Moreover, few women are on those lists, largely as a result of poor counseling in the high schools.

Action:

• Women's groups must lobby governments for tuition subsidies for women who seek training in technology-related fields.

• Some women welfare recipients, for example, have access only to courses offered by government. Pressure must be exerted for better counseling and adequate financial support.

Skills Transference/Career Mobility

Moderator:
Eileen O'Neill, CEIC

Speaker:
Sharon Varette, Senior Research
Consultant, Abt Associates of Canada

Is the gap widening between low-level and high-level jobs in the high-tech office? Training for women has concentrated on word processing: a dead-end. Before too long, voice recognition and output in computers will eliminate much of the work now linked to the keyboard. To become truly mobile and to break out of the low-level operator jobs, women will have to acquire computer knowledge and skills, while simultaneously pursuing broader studies in their own fields of interest. This forked path could contribute to new career opportunities. Reasoning skills, planning and communications, design and writing are all fields to explore.

Action:

• Canada should follow the example set by Norway in establishing an independent "Work Research Institute" to document the ongoing changes in the job market, to forecast new developments and educational needs. Women must pressure government for the establishment of such an institute.