A women’s center

TVET — technical, vocational education and training – is a very important sector in equipping and employing a nation’s people. What others see as a lower kind of education when one is not able to enter university or college is a very potent resource for technically-adept youth and individuals with high-earning potential in what we now call the bigger word, which is STEM (science, tech, engineering and mathematics).

I saw on TV how a 15-year-old lass is able to fix or repair motorcycles as an assistant to her father and I was amazed. Young girls can definitely have a career in STEM or TVET. Another Youtube clip sent to me by a friend featured “linewomen” of Meralco. I actually have a high school friend in the US who started as the first batch of women who worked in a phone company maybe 30 years ago. Here, we now see “linewomen,” mechanics and, in our company, a host of engineers who are women.

Technology and improvements in automotive manufacturing and other factories have now allowed women to take on higher-paying jobs as engineers, plumbers and even painters.

These are what is referred to as non-traditional female jobs – construction, automotive and now, energy, too, as fields of expertise where women can also excel.

This women’s month we focus on what women can do besides the usual TESDA courses of cooking, barista and baking subjects. Our Center Advisory Council (CAC), composed of professionals and educators, private sector practitioners, consultants and entrepreneurs, brainstorm with TESDA career officials on progressive and current fields of training and expertise, as suggested by the very employers who need such talent. We consult industry on the new job titles and new qualifications such as Digital Fluency.

Every council meeting is filled with excitement as TESDA Women’s Center would like to be a model for progressive learning while keeping to the government mandate and observing the grading system (e.g. NC 1 or NC 2) which has been recognized for many years now.

Employers are aware about qualifications of TESDA graduates and employ them with confidence.

Other new training programs are on language skills, to feed into the Department of Tourism’s need for bilingual tour guides. Women are known to easily learn additional foreign languages, arming them with this skill to become tour guides or translators. We also suggested more training in digital jobs – virtual assistants, online staff and other jobs that keep mothers at home to raise children while also working. These virtual or online jobs allow mothers to supervise their young and to spend less on commute time to work out of the house. A group called Connected Women (CW), headed by Gina Romero and Agnes Gervacio, can easily absorb these virtual employees as CW specializes in providing jobs for women who can be home-bound while earning in dollars.

There is no better time than now for women to have career and home life happily balanced, and for children to be supervised by the mother during their sensitive growing up years.

There also is no better time than now for women to look at non-traditional jobs and careers which also usually pay better than clerical jobs. Companies no longer discriminate for engineering jobs as far as I know. Women are detail-oriented which makes them good at jobs requiring a good eye for spotting minute things like finishing painters in construction and special jobs in engineering departments.

If you also have noticed, there are now more female pilots and it is no longer a surprise when the captain of your flight is a lady. A few friends are lucky to have female chauffeurs or family drivers who can also help in the kitchen when the lady boss is not being driven around. There are women boat enthusiasts and yacht “sailors” who compete in international races.

Truly, the lines between male and female kinds of jobs have been blurred and women can now try their hand at anything, given that technology has made the “brawn” type of jobs less needed, except maybe to carry heavy loads in construction. Technology uses more brain than brawn and has truly equalized the pay scale and job specifications for the various “male dominated” fields of yesteryears.

This is why we at the TESDA Women’s Center Advisory Council are, along with its very competent management, seeking new ways to empower women to earn better while raising children. To earn higher pay, adding skills which are usually for men empower women to get higher and better pay and establish a different career path that distinguishes them from the usual rank and file jobs.

These new, albeit non-traditional jobs offer women a choice to earn while not leaving the home, such as the online jobs now which are getting very common. On the other hand, mothers can also be employed in the tech and engineering fields in manufacturing plants or in high tech fields of renewable energy as solar power technicians and the like.

I know of a couple where the woman started as a virtual assistant while the partner worked in an office. Soon, her business flourished as a podcast manager and he now works with her full time as a videographer and they both work from home as entrepreneurs. Couples can evolve to work together on virtual jobs. This is the way of the future. And it is now.

The TESDA Women’s Center may as well be the national training and development center for women, to give women a leg up in furthering their careers at home or outside it.

Meantime, we in the private sector are just as excited to serve as their source of innovative ideas and new and better ways of empowering the female work force.

Since it’s Women’s month, let’s celebrate institutions like TESDA that have a women’s center to empower women and change lives.