Kelechi* considers herself a nomadic woman because of the nature of her husband's job which requires them to move around Nigerian states a lot. And this has cost her a job and other job opportunities. Now, she's developing skills for remote jobs and running a community of wives with similar stories.
Why do you work?
Short answer? For the money
Long answer: in order to be useful to myself and also my society. Sometimes, passion comes into it too.
What would you say you are passionate about?
I'm passionate about solving people's problems in any way I can. That's why sometimes I'm able to fit into so many sectors as long as they deal with humans.
And so far, how many opportunities have you gotten to solve people's problems while getting paid for it?
I have a fast-growing community that I recently started because I have a problem that I believe I'm not the only one facing it. So, I decided to create a community where I can have like minds coming together to solve the problem.
The problem is this: My husband travels all over the country. And once his transfer comes, I have to travel with him, especially since it's the early stage of our marriage.
When he was transferred to another state after we got married and I moved with him, I became very lonely, because it felt like I was starting all over again. Life became very lonely for me even though I was trying to navigate remote jobs; it wasn't still the same because of the people I'd left behind in the previous location.
Based on the kind of passion I have for helping people solve their problems, I thought there were other women in my shoes, why don't we come together and look for ways to solve our problems? At the moment, we have over 40 members. And people share what they feel about the community.
We all came together and started solving our loneliness and joblessness problems. We started asking ourselves how to address our mental health and get help. In a way, I believe I'm solving the problem for others and also for myself.
Suck at managing people?
Give it a try, you can unsubscribe anytime. Privacy Policy.
Hiring a Community Manager?
Written by a community building expert with 15 years experience. Learn more.
How have you navigated jobs; getting jobs, working remotely, and all that?
There was this company I was working with remotely when I was in the previous location. After I gave birth, there were some issues. Then we relocated to this current place, and I kept working remotely with them for months.
Then all of a sudden, I got a call that I should either resume at my former office physically or at another branch in a different state. For obvious reasons, I couldn't. That would mean I'd have to be separated from my family.
So, I had to stop the job because there was no way I could handle it. They also stopped the option to work remotely. And there are other incidents like that. Let's say I applied for a job and it's on-site and I let them know I'm a mum and other information like that, I'll probably get a rejection.
Have you now given up on finding jobs?
No. I just feel I should start developing myself more.
It will later be a game changer when I get the kind of value I'm talking about. Then, it’s going to be about how important I am to the organisation, not what they can offer me.
Wahala for who don marry o🤦🏽
That’s why every woman should have something tangible to do before marriage.
Talking about developing oneself, what are you up to with that?
I’m currently taking a course on program management where I can learn more about how to work with different companies remotely.
Let's go back to the community you're building. What's your plan for it?
My mission is to try as much as possible to make all women know their feelings as nomadic women are perfectly valid.
To reach out to as many women as possible that being a wife and mother, irrespective of jobs, can still achieve anything they put their minds to.
Even though our parents passed through these stages in silence, we will speak out and let women know they are not alone. I also want to reach out to other women around them that it’s alright to be a career nomadic partner.
From personal experiences and the stories you've heard from others, do you think the job market is favourable to married women, aside from the ones with your unique circumstances, compared to other genders?
I feel it depends on the organisation. In my husband's job as a security personnel, there are women who are of the same rank as him and the kind of privileges they have are more.
Some organisations are very reasonable and don't do gender discrimination, especially with married women. They give maternity leave for about three to six months and the likes.
Some organisations are not that reasonable. A friend told me a story of how she had to quit her job last week in Abuja.
She had to unavoidably arrive late at work for two weeks because of the incessant early morning rain that went on for two weeks which she couldn't enter while carrying her toddler without a car.
For a job that isn't really customer-facing, the issue got escalated, and the last conversation she had with her boss made her quit.
If you had the opportunity to make reforms on how the wives of military personnel or Federal Government workers who have to be transferred a lot are given exemptions on how they get jobs, what would it be?
The first thing I'll do is provide an avenue for remote and flexible jobs, benefits for partners of people that travel around, and training for them in each state and community so they can use it to boost their career, etc.
Basically, the only job a security personnel’s wife can do is business or remote jobs. Well, there are some wives who don’t follow their husbands around probably because they’ve both agreed on picking a state of their choice as a meeting point.
Anything aside from this, what’s the point of going into a job knowing fully well one won’t be there for a long period of time? Besides, organisations are also careful about who to employ that won’t affect the swiftness of their business.
You can find previous editions of Work Life here.
Do you have an interesting story for Work Life? Pitch to Oluwanifemi.
