The year 2000 is only a dozen years away, and projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest dramatic changes in the 21st Century workplace.
By then almost half of the work force will be female, labor bureau economists predict. Six out of seven women between ages 16 and 65 will be in the paid labor market. And women, minorities and immigrants will make up more than 80 percent of the new entrants to the U.S. labor force between now and 2000. Jobs will be available for all who are properly trained.
Demographics also foretell a scarcity of workers aged 16 to 25 to fill entry level jobs. That means employers might very well compete for the skills of mature women.
”Will women have an easier time on the job in the next century?,” asks a TempoWoman reader. ”Will we have more opportunity? Will we be hired for those high-paying, nontraditional jobs? Will we get equal pay?”
Her final question: ”Will we still be expected to be Superwomen?”
MIKA J. SABADASZKA
Age 32, assistant construction manager, Urban Investment and Development Co.
Today less than 2 percent of construction jobs are held by women, but Sabadaszka, whose 900 N. Michigan Ave. project includes Bloomingdale`s, expects change by the year 2000.
”Women will have a better chance to get good jobs, because they`ll have the education they`ll need to qualify,” says the Sabadaszka, who has an associate degree in business from Northwestern University and is working for her associate degree in construction contracting and managing at Triton College.
”It will be easier to get into construction, because it`s getting easier now,” she said. ”Women will be given the chance to prove themselves.”
Sabadaszka did it the hard way: She started out as a receptionist at Urban Investment in 1981. Later working in accounting and in office leasing, she eventually heard of an opening as a project assistant, applied for it and was given a chance. In 1986, she enrolled in Triton`s cooperative education program and was promoted to her present post last June. Wearing a hard hat, she ”acts as liaison between contractors and owners.”
Sabadaszka thinks construction will continue to be a man`s world. ”There are many male chauvinists who think women should be at home, barefoot and pregnant. Some of that is diminishing, but construction still will be a man`s world.”
However, she also thinks women will have increased job opportunities in the trades. ”We`re calling plumbers, carpenters and electricians
`tradespersons,` instead of `tradesmen`-and that shows things are changing.”
In 2000, Sabadaszka, says, she hopes to follow in the steps of Janice Sava-Goldsmith, Urban Investment`s assistant vice president. ”I`ll probably be managing my own project,” she says.
LULU KAMATOY
Age 43, owner, Lulu Represents
An artists` representative for photographers, illustrators and retouchers, Kamatoy opened her business in 1986 when she and her family moved to Chicago from Indiana.
Kamatoy, who always wanted to own her own business, thinks women in the 21st Century won`t wait as long as she did to become entrepreneurs.
”Women by that time will have a lot more confidence,” says Kamatoya, former professor of theater at the University of Southern Indiana at Evansville.
”There won`t be so many barriers,” she says, ”and women will be able to do what they want to do without people telling them they can`t. It will be easier to get (financing) because banks are beginning to realize women do know how to get and establish credit.”
In her own field, which is notoriously ”cut-throat,” Kamatoy says the booking field will ”still have a lot of men, but more and more women will be working in it. Women are naturals at making calls and presentations.”
One advantage in her business is that it doesn`t require a lot of start-up money, and that won`t change, either.
Kamatoy earned her bachelor`s degree from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, the Philippines, and her master`s in educational theater from New York University; she also studied speech and drama in England.
She says the easy part of starting her business was getting contacts, because her husband, Ernie Kamatoy, is in advertising. The hard part was landing accounts, and she doesn`t expect that to change much in a dozen years. Kamatoy, who has a daughter, Lisette, 14, says, ”Women have endless energy, and it`s marvelous the way we combine both home and career. There will be even more of that in the year 2000.”
Her daughter shows potential for being an artist, Kamatoy says, and in the year 2000, ”I definitely want to represent her.”
MERRI DEE
Age 51, talk show host and announcer, WGN-Ch. 9
Dee has been in television for 21 years, has seen many changes and expects to see many more.
The host of ”Heart of Chicago,” aired Saturdays at 6:30 a.m., Dee says when she started in the media, ”I was one of three women I was aware of: two in television and one in radio. As time passed, I began to see things open for women in general, but not so much for black women. And there were no Hispanics.”
Dee says women next got jobs as technicians, ”behind the scenes but not in leadership roles.”
Because so many women appeared in TV commercials, ”women began to think there were a lot of us in TV, but there weren`t,” she comments. ”Today it is important for stations to have one woman or more.”
By the end of the century, Dee says, ”There will be even more women on-camera and a lot more off. And things will get better for the mature woman. At the same time as TV switches to younger men on camera-the older guy has had his heyday-older women will be hired. They`re not going to get rid of us when we get older.”
The new entrant to television will ”come into business from school,”
Dee predicts. ”She`ll have no experience but a lot of knowledge. We, the previous generation, learned one thing and got proficient at it. She`ll know everything.”
Dee, who went to work after her divorce, when her daughter, Toya Dorham, was a baby, thinks combining careers and work may be easier in the 21st Century.
”The responsibility for children will still be the woman`s,” says Dee.
”That won`t change. But she`ll get more help from the father, the corporation and legislators. I believe there will be day care right on the premises.”
”Women will know what they want and make plans for it,” she says. ”We (in her generation) took what came and hoped for the best.”
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Send comments and ideas for future questions to Carol Kleiman, The Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
