Veronica

My name is Veronica Griggs. I am 65 years of age, born in WA, the 4th child to very Catholic parents. I trained as a nurse at Fremantle Hospital  and completed my training by doing Midwifery in Tasmania. I married Peter in the sixties, and settled in Tasmania raising 4 children.  I then worked part time whilst the children were young, then took on more hours and developed a career as a Diabetes Educator from 1981 -2007. I am now the proud grandmother of a boy and three girls who live with their parents in SA, Victoria and Tasmania.

Growing up in a Catholic environment has contributed to my strong sense of duty to family and the working environment. Some may say the old fashioned Catholic guilt has a lot to answer for, but it has helped fashion my attitude towards life, sometimes to my own detriment.

My father believed that a woman's place was in the home and women worked until they had a family, however my mother was always ready to push the limits and have a go. I think I have always felt I had to prove myself capable of showing them how much I could achieve as they had very low expectations of me. My husband has always believed I was capable of achieving good results, and when I returned to study it was with his and my daughters support that I achieved a Graduate Certificate in Diabetes Education from Deakin University in 1993. I feel that I care about people in general and particularly those whom I have had the privilege to work with in the past.

How I define success for women in the year 2020

Success is setting goals and achieving them whether it be in your personal or work environment. Family is important for everyone. I believe that the woman is still the principle homemaker, however, she needs support from family, the government and society to do this. The woman who chooses to stay at home caring for the family is just as worthy of our praise and support as the person who goes out to work. There needs to be more child minding facilities, pre-school and after school care available for the children of those who are in the work force due to the fact that grandparents are not always available to fulfil these tasks.

Equal pay for equal work is still an issue. There continue to be discrepancies between the pay for men and women in a variety of work places, e.g. male and female teachers where males find it easier to receive promotion and women are concentrated in the infant and lower primary area.

Paid maternity leave for all women is a key step in helping women manage their lives within their families.

My proudest achievement

My proudest achievement is giving life to four fine people (my children). In the workplace my proudest achievement was being nominated and then awarded the Jan Baldwin Award for Holistic Care and Approach to Diabetes Education in 2007.