Social workers, teachers and nurses: the new "it" careers for women?

Published by Ryan Healy on November 26th, 2007 in Employment | 14 Comments

I went to my five year high school reunion last Friday. It was a lot of fun. I was able to see my best friend Keith who just spent the past 15 months teaching in Japan and traveling third world countries. I spoke with old friends whom I've kept in contact with and talked to old acquaintances that I may or may not have ran across on Facebook. Some people looked exactly the same, others were nearly unrecognizable. All in all, it was an interesting experience.

The most memorable part of the night had to be when an ex-classmate stumbled up to Keith and me with two full drinks in hand.

"Ryan Healy. I saw you on 60 minutes. Wow, we've come a long ways since listening to Bone Thugs N Harmony in eighth grade."

I replied, "Hey man, we sure have!"

He then proceeded to dump his full vodka and tonic into his other full vodka and tonic; no joke. Of course, the drink had to go somewhere, and that somewhere ended up being all over my sweater.

I've had my fair share of drinks spilled on me over the years, so I wasn't too upset. But then he decided to fall into me and drool all over my shoes. This was a little too much for me to handle. So I gave him a quick pat on the back and wished him well.

Apparently, he hasn't come quite as far as he thinks since the old days. But somebody's got to be that guy, right?

Anyway, back to the point. You cannot go through a high school reunion without asking and answering the question, "What are you doing these days?" It gets annoying to answer, but I'm always interested to hear from others.

After a couple hours of telling my life story and intently listening to everyone else's life stories, Keith and I bumped into each other and decided it was time to take a break and hide out in the corner next to the food. We came to a very interesting realization. A huge majority of females from the Cheshire High School class of 2002 were social workers, teachers, or nurses.

I was totally surprised. My life since college has been spent in two places; an overly expensive city dominated by the federal government and consulting firms, and online with bloggers, web designers and entrepreneurs. Keith spent his time teaching eight year olds in Japan and hanging out with Japanese fishermen at night. Neither of us had any idea how popular these three career paths have become. And in all honesty, I'm still wondering if my town is an anomaly, and not representative of our generation as a whole.

I certainly hope this is representative of our generation. All three of these careers are not only extremely important to our country, our children and our economy, but they are personally rewarding as well. Nurses save lives, teachers shape lives and depending where they work, social workers do both.

Nursing has been ranked as one of the most popular careers for 2007, but the other two aren't typically in the top ten. Further, there isn't a whole lot of money in these fields. People are pursuing them because they are meaningful jobs, because they have a passion for helping people, and because they are rewarding. And honestly, what else can you ask for from a job?

My questions now are, why are an overwhelmingly large percentage of women pursuing these paths? Are we going back to a society where men are expected to bring in the money, not because women are staying home, but because women are pursuing the truly rewarding and important careers? Or is my town just an anomaly?