Ordinary Women-Extraordinary Lives

A Woman's Career Legacy

In Kathleen's Words

 

While interviewing and conducting research for my master’s thesis, I was inspired to create Ordinary Women-Extraordinary Lives: A Woman’s Career Legacy. It is both a story book and a legacy journal. Each of the eight women interviewed for the research project had created an extraordinary life.

 

These women were extremely successful in their paid work roles. They were selected for the project for that reason - to understand their career journeys. I was interested in learning more about what had brought them to their current work situations, what challenges they’d met, and what obstacles they had overcome on their journey of achievement. I believed that other women—women like you and I—could learn from their examples and achieve our dreams too.

In addition to significant achievements in their paid work, each of these ordinary women had contributed significantly to her community and the common good. Their voluntary contributions and how they had made the world a better place in general, were really quite astounding.

 

These were ordinary women and their lived experience confirmed something I’d long felt. Women and the outstanding work they do outside of the paid workforce deserve celebration.

 

The term “women’s work”—the unpaid work women do for love, not money—has too long been used dismissively. Instead of downplaying the contributions so many women make to their families, their homes, their communities, to charities and organizations, we need to recognize the value in this work. Without it, our society would simply not function. 

 

It is my hope that the stories of these eight women will motivate and inspire you to reflect upon and record your own legacy within this Keepsake Journal. Perhaps you will feel compelled to share with other women, your journey—the story that is uniquely yours. In doing so, you will help empower ordinary women and celebrate their extraordinary contribution.