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Careers
in Your Suitcase:
Believe
in Blue Sky
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by Joanna
Parfitt
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Determination and self-motivation
are the keys.
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| Any expatriate wife,
or trailing spouse as she is so often called these days, can tell you how
hard it is to maintain a career during life on the move.
Kit Prendergast is a licensed clinical
social worker from the United States. Several years ago she followed
her husband to Norway and left full time employment for the first time.
"I had been counseling other people
for twenty years or more and suddenly realized that I was cracking up myself,"
she explains. "The expatriate wife has a far tougher role than the husband.
He just goes to an office every day and comes home again, much as he always
has done. The wife has to do the settling in, find the supermarkets,
schools, doctors, gas stations as well as organize a social life for everyone.
Only then can she consider looking for a career for herself."
Careers are often forced onto the
back burner while women have to deal with real crises concerned with culture
shock and loss of a familiar identity.
In his book entitled, Guerrilla
Tactics in the Job Market, Tom Jackson informs us that stress kills
as many people as war. Work you don't like is close to the top of
the list of stress generators. Not having a job when you want one
produces even more stress than having a job you don't like.
Thousands of expatriate wives the
world over will echo these sentiments. In fact it is said that up
to 80 per cent of the postings that fail, do so because the wife
is unhappy about sacrificing her own career.
But before you vow never to be persuaded
to move to another country, take heart. There is life after the packing
cases are emptied. In fact there is tremendous opportunity. |
 Joanna
Parfitt decided to launch a website to help everyone interested in
finding their passion and turning it into a portable career. She is delighted
to say that www.career-in-your-suitcase.com is now available and completely
free. Read articles, case studies and details of great career opportunities.
Find out whom you should be connecting with, what you should be reading
and where the careers seminars are being held. Log on to subscribe
to her free monthly ezine, The Monthly Inspirer. The first one will come
out next month and past issues will be archived on the website. Aside
from her website, she writes for Expatrium and The Weekly Telegraph, is
involved in a number of workshops and seminars, and is a founder of Women
Abroad.
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Additional
Resources
Travel Links 
Living Overseas
Unique Lifestyles
Moving to
Europe
Maps Of The World
World Reference Desk
Articles on Living Overseas
Living and
Working in France
International Jobs Marketplace
Offshore Real Estate Quarterly
Visit Careers in Your Suitcase site
Contact Joanna
Parfitt
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Expatriate breadwinners are usually
educated and interesting people. It follows then, that expatriate
breadwinners have educated and interesting spouses too. Many
wives want more than a constant circuit of coffee mornings and ladies luncheon
clubs. They have skills, and they would like to use them, even share
them. In many countries, they will be fortunate enough to have help
in the house. They will also not be desperate for a steady second
income. These facts give women the chance to take a risk, to do something
they really love, or to change direction completely.
In A Career in Your Suitcase,
the subject of successful portable careers is studied in depth. Moving
around the world throws up a host of opportunities and challenges, and
while some people choose to retrain, others chose to define success in
terms of satisfaction, say, rather than in hard cash. Many find themselves
changing career direction completely or tilting their hats, so to speak,
rather than changing them.
Anne Love, originally a horticulturist,
found herself writing a monthly gardening column in Oman. This led
to her taking the risk of writing a book, Gardening in the Gulf.
For this, Anne needed to learn to take professional photographs.
One expatriate wife taught her how for free. Next, Anne needed to
learn to word process. Another wife passed on her own skills here,
too. Someone else proofread at very low cost, and another undertook the
desktop publishing. Finally, with the copy on a diskette, Apex Publishing
agreed to a joint publishing venture. Anne could then be seen selling her
book in all the school playgrounds and Christmas bazaars. She even
had tee shirts printed with a copy of the cover and became a walking advertisement.
Now in The Hague, Anne's hat has swiveled still further for she is working
in desktop publishing. Anne is a fine example of the synergy and
co-operation that is possible between women in a foreign environment.
| Let's stay with Anne a little longer,
for her marketing and publicity are typical of the tactics that can work
in a small community. When you are a large fish in a small pond,
so to speak, and your product is accurately targeted at that audience,
you have a high chance of success. Anne saw a need in the community and
turned that need into an opportunity.
As Ian Fairservice, Managing Director
of Motivate Publishing in Dubai, has said so succinctly, "It's easy to
be famous on al Fahidi Street." Ian is proof of the theory.
For while working in a hotel, he identified the need for a What's On
magazine in the Emirate, took a risk and turned this monthly paper into
a publishing empire that has offices worldwide.
Synergy and clever targeting are
not the only things that make for a perfect portable career. Skills
are important, but, as we have seen, they can be acquired or borrowed.
It is determination and self-motivation that are the key. |
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When I arrived in Stavanger, Norway
in 1996, I felt invisible. I was a lonesome, anonymous pine tree
in a forest of four million. I didn't know the hideouts of the people who
were going to barter skills with me. So, I did something that I did
in Oman before me, and in Dubai before that. I started a Writers
Circle. Not something that immediately conjures up a picture of a
professional businesswoman, is it? Yet, for me such a group is the key
to retaining my sanity. Writing is my hobby and part of my career,
so I needed to form a support group of soul mates before I could begin
to grow in a new environment.
"Having a support group is vitally
important," agrees Kit Prendergast. "Away from family and friends we need
to find people we can relate to, building your own support team is imperative."
| Kit did just that when she went
to Oslo, for she set up an organization which called itself the International
Association of Professional Businesswomen (IAPBW). This is an offshoot
of a similar group she had belonged to back in the States. This place
quickly became an English speaking forum for women of all nationalities.
With monthly meetings, speakers, skill building workshops, and networking,
the organization became her lifeline. When in Stavanger she set up a local
chapter of IAPBW, which now calls itself the Women's International Network
(WIN).
"WIN saved my life," says Karen Powell,
a multi-mover who found expatriate life sapped her of both confidence and
energy once children had been added to the equation. After just a few months,
she became involved in a network-marketing venture that fits around her
family commitments. |
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Elizabeth Douet was co-chairperson
of WIN before her own move to Hamburg three years ago. "Expatriate
wives have learned to be resourceful and strong through constant transition.
Women are no longer prepared to tag along in silence, and the employers
are at last taking note. We have the tools to make things happen and I
like to make the most of sharing this optimism," she says.
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