One female, multiple careers: The rise of the modern ‘superwoman’
updated the 16 May 2016 à 10:19Banker/gym teacher or hairdresser/singer, “slashers” accumulate several jobs, less for the money than for their own fulfilment. Here’s why.
From the typographic symbol “slash – / – “, the word” slasher” characterizes active women who have several jobs. The “/” appears frequently on their business cards. Choosing only one means giving up the other; thus, leading to boredom. The activities can be complementary or be completely different. So, they are a hairdresser/singer, a librarian/sports coach, HR manager/webzine director, banker/landscape painter, and so on. In the USA, the home of self-made (wo) men, the trend resulted in the publication of a best-seller, “One person, multiple careers “, by Marci Alboher, consultant, speaker and author. To the question “What do you do for a living?”, she noticed that most answered, with a smile, I have several lives”.
Typical of generation Y, born into a world of crisis and unemployment, the “slasher world” embodies another philosophy of our relationship with work; independence and pleasure, rather than financial enrichment. We want to be fulfilled by what we do, even if we are conscious of the fragility of our professional situations. Because we can lose our job anytime, it is better to choose a really fulfilling one. By focusing on several activities, we widen our relational network, expand our experiences, navigate different circles and multiply our identities. The worst would be the reduction of the field and the feeling of being at the mercy of a single boss or system. “We leave the job security, but we gain a better organization of our time, the balance between the private life and the professional life is easier to find “, insist the activists of the slash life.
Whatever our chosen professional path, nobody is protected from unemployment; therefore, it is better to have two or three jobs, so as not to “put all our eggs in one basket”. To agree with slashers, a professional background is no more linear, but zigzags happily from fixed-term contracts, to temporary work or auto-entrepreneurship. This is a trend encouraged by telecommuting. Permanent work is becoming increasingly scarce; therefore, companies rely on more flexible and less captivating collaborations. However, this kind of freedom is a two-way street. The collaborator can pack a bag overnight, which is very attractive for some people. For the Y generation, who saw their parents dismissed after having completely dedicated themselves to their company, there is no way to do the same thing. The X generation, parents of Y, think the same: combine multiple jobs, work in one place for a while, then move on.
Valèrie Rodrigue
