Bunbury woman Chereen Price says she feels as though "there is a fire inside".
"I feel like there is more, and this is a door that has opened and I want to explore it," Ms Price said.
The support worker is one of more than 120 regional women who have taken part in a $500,000 Curtin University project in Bunbury, in Western Australia's south-west, to get them not just job-ready, but career-ready.
The Rural, Regional, Remote Women's Network said the project aimed to lift women's workplace participation, which still sits below their metropolitan sisters.
Chief executive Kendall Galbraith said the project also aimed to build career resilience.
"Part of that is having the resilience to understand the barriers that they are up against, such as access to childcare and narrow employment markets," she said.
'You can achieve it'
Sarah Arnold and her husband ran the post office in the seaside town of Dunsborough for 16 "hectic, non-stop" years.
She attended the career workshop to try to work out what to do next.
"I'd like to get up and be excited about the next thing that I'm going to do … but I don't know what that is," she said.
Ms Arnold said the prospect of her 50th birthday had prompted a desire for change.
"Probably I will have to go to study," she said. "I'm 50 in June. So I'm a bit freaked out by my age."
But she said the course had helped her feel less overwhelmed and realise the skills she already had.
"It takes a bit to tell yourself you can achieve it," she said.
"I'm trying to tell myself I can achieve more, and I don't have to just go for some basic level job."
Career resilience and challenges
At the most recent workshop in Bunbury, Curtin University associate professor Jane Coffey said a lack of childcare was the largest, but not the only, barrier to sustainable careers.
Dr Coffey said the type of work available to many women also tended to be precarious.
"[Women] are going to community services, education, retail, hospitality, not-for-profit work, and that's generally where the most precarious work is," she said.
"Not only is it fairly low paid, but it's either casual, part-time contract, or at the mercy of ongoing funding."
Priorities shift over time
Dr Coffey said women could use the "kaleidoscope approach" to their work, where the priorities of balance, authenticity and challenge shifted over a career.
Ultimately, she encouraged women to look beyond what they could not control and to explore options.
"The imposter syndrome says I don't think I can do that, or I'm not capable," she said.
"It's about giving them permission and saying, 'Actually you are capable', and to go and explore that."
For Ms Price, the workshop provided reassurance it was OK to have changing priorities over the course of a career.
"I feel like I could do more and be more," she said.
"[But] I'm not alone, there are women in this situation where you have priorities and they need to come first.
"It's OK to be where you're at."
