People must not be married at first sight to career options

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald, June 10, 2023.

Narrowing down our options is probably the most common approach to decision-making. Its popularity is reflected in reality TV dating shows. They frequently feature a bunch of attention-seeking, self-obsessed, generally young and deemed to be in possession of appropriately attractive looks, if not faculties, who whittle or are whittled down until the decider makes the “perfect choice”.In the same way that we are encouraged to couple (or these days, perhaps, throuple) with our “ideal” match, our Mr/Miss/Mrs/They/Them right, from an early age and through adulthood we are encouraged to find the ideal job or career.

Family members, carers and significant people get in on this act from an early age. Woe betide the young sucker that shows an interest in Lego. Before they’ve got much beyond putting two and two blocks together, they are bombarded by an encouraging cheer squad of adults proclaiming the youngster as a prodigy. Boys can expect to have builder, architect, property developer ringing in their ears. Girls are more likely to hear creative artist, or town planner.

Right there, right then in early childhood, Jack and Jill are being sent up the hill, to fetch a pail of sex-role stereotyping. The effect is to narrow down or circumscribe their thinking about career choices. No matter you think. They are only children.

Lego in 1974 produced a pamphlet for their dolls houses that apparently tried to counter this problem. In it, they wrote “A lot of boys like dolls houses. They are more human than spaceships. A lot of girls like spaceships. They are more exciting than dolls houses … let them create whatever appeals to them”.

Fifty years on, and Lego’s message needs repeating. New research I have been involved with at Become Education points to the continuing premature narrowing down of young people’s career choices. We asked over 7000 Australian students between Year 5 and Year 10 about their career aspirations. Worryingly we found that for half of the students, their aspirations covered only 10 occupations compared with the 52,000 in our system, or the 3272 in the Australian Standard Classification of Occupations Alternative titles list.

Both boys and girls showed the same premature narrowing down, but, they clearly didn’t read the Lego memo. Those 10 occupations differed for boys and girls, with only five common occupations. Depressingly predictably, the boys chose engineering and technology and construction, the girls did not. The girls chose visual arts and design, and counselling and mental health services and the boys did not. Boys are builders, girls are artists, helpers and carers. Welcome to the 1950s.