National Future Day 2014
Dear kids and teens: Welcome to today’s Future Day at the IT Services!
An exciting program awaits you. Expect the unexpected!
Thank You
Many many thanks to our ITS-helpers Peter Kessler, Caroline Stucki, Andrea Kessler, Eveline Blöchliger, Christian Wyss, Pasquale Krähemann, Philipp Gabathuler, Riyadh Ismaili, Lea Huonder and Sabine Hoffmann! Thanks for the technical support Dawid Nehrenheim, ITS SDL Managed Services!
National Future Day- what for?
For the past several years the canton of Zurich has been evaluating apprenticeship contracts in a breakdown by gender. What emerged are figures similar to those in the whole of Switzerland, namely that there exists something called “gender segregation in occupations”. While three-quarters of young men make their choice from 26 different professions, ¾ of young women choose from only 11 professions!
The preference of professions shows strong differences by gender. In 2001 this led the Swiss Conference of Gender Equality Delegates to initiate “National Daughter Day” as part of the apprenticeship project 16+. The idea was simple: During one day the girls visit their father at work and get the chance to learn more about male-dominated professions (boys would use that day at school to focus on the issue of career choice). The project, with over half a million participants, was a great success. In 2010, the day was broadened to include boys and renamed “National Future Day“. The basic idea remained the same: Young people should gain insight into professions mainly practiced by the opposite gender and thereby expand their horizons and break down prejudices.
Career choices are decisively shaped by three factors
- Interest in the profession or field
- Self-confidence in one’s own abilities, e.g. I believe I can cope with the demands of this profession
- Identification with the profession or field and, often underestimated, social acceptance of the profession. This includes the immediate personal environment. Studies have shown that parental opinion can have a great influence in career choice (as in… “THAT is not a profession for a girl / boy! How will you later ….”)
Society
Society has its own definition of gender roles. These definitions are called stereotypes. The picture obtained from the EU statistics of She Figures clearly shows how differently such stereotypes may affect the career choices in various cultures. The figures show that the proportion of women in technical and scientific professions varies greatly by country. This is a sign that it is not only skills and interests that are responsible for the choice of career.
One Goal of Future Day
One goal of Future Day, therefore, is to encourage children to reflect on whether they will simply choose a profession according to social stereotype or rather in accordance with personal interest, even if it means going against the “norm”.
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