Technology benefits diplomatic spouses

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Technology benefits diplomatic

spouses
This is the last in a two-part series highlighting the way diplomatic
spouses are adapting to an ever-changing career environment while
accompanying their spouses to new postings. ED.

By Kang Hyun-kyung
The working life environment, mainly driven by
technology, has been changing in favor of
diplomatic spouses who seek to balance their
career and family.
E-working and video conferences have become
common in many workplaces and this makes it
easier for diplomatic spouses to stay on their
career path even when they are posted
overseas.
Avigail Gutman, the wife of Israeli Ambassador
Uri Gutman, says she sees a discernible
change in the environment facing diplomatic
spouses, compared with that of their
counterparts in the past.

Maria Ligaya Fujita, wife

of Brazilian Ambassador
Edmundo Fujita

Her mother was a diplomatic spouse but worked full-time as a scientist

wherever she and her husband were posted, Ms. Gutman says.
Today things are simpler for diplomatic spouses than they were in the
early 1990s, says Gutman, who now works with CISCO. They were
certainly simpler than they were in the 1960s when my mother was a
young diplomatic spouse and the only mom in my kindergarten who
worked.
Akseli Korhonen, the husband of Finnish diplomat Heinei Korhonen,
says coupled with the advancement of technology, changing career
trends also help diplomatic spouses.

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Technology benefits diplomatic spouses

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I think work life in Finland is changing. People are not tied to the same
company and the same job with which they began their career, he
says.
Plus, Internet and technology make it easier for diplomatic spouses to
work remotely. I think these factors help them keep pursuing their
career while being posted abroad.
Korhonen says a foreign posting definitely makes it difficult for spouses
to stay on their own career path. But, he notes, this doesnt necessarily
mean that career breaks are inevitable for diplomatic spouses.
He made the remarks as female diplomats dominate the Finish foreign
ministry.
If there are men who hesitate to marry their girlfriends who are
diplomats because of moving every three or four years, Korhonen says,
he would encourage them to go to their employers and discuss the
possibility of e-working or other ways to make their marriage and career
work.
In addition to technology, Maria Ligaya Fujita, the wife of Brazilian
Ambassador Edmundo Fujita, says family support matters.
Managing ones professional career as a diplomatic spouse requires
the art, skill and emotional maturity to surf successfully on gigantic
waves generated by constant diplomatic moves, she says.
In retrospect, Ms. Fujita, who had a U.N. career, admitted that it was
tough for her to stay on her career while her husband was called upon
to serve in foreign postings every few years.
The couple had to move nine times during Ambassador Fujitas 38-year
diplomatic career.
At times, it may require enduring physical separation from families for
some periods, and loss of ones financial independence, among
others, she says.
For Ms. Fujita, one of the most challenging moments in her career
came when her husband was called upon to return to Brazil from New
York after years of service there.
She had to make a choice between the fancy U.N. career and quitting it
to accompany her husband back to Brazil.
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Technology benefits diplomatic spouses

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Fujita, a doctoral degree holder in international studies, worked with

UNFPA as a consultant in New York when her husband was posted
there.
For five years I had the most satisfying life professionally while my
husband worked as counselor at the Brazilian Mission to the United
Nations, she says. It was a perfect situation. We were double income
no kid. Through my work in UNFPA, I learned the whole cycle of project
and program formulation, monitoring and evaluation and continued
population policies and gender equality in development.
This time with the greater challenge of giving up a promising
international U.N. career... I stayed for another six months in New York
but family concerns brought me back to Brazil.
Fujita was determined to go back to Brazil for family concerns six
months after her husband left New York.

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