Helping professions

Helping professions are those professions in which people are cared for, treated, advised or looked after. Examples are doctor and ambulance , nurse or nurses , Medical worker , nursing assistants , emergency medical technician , paramedic and paramedic , midwife , dietician , physiotherapist , social worker , drug and addiction counselors , geriatric nurse , doctor , occupational therapists , support workers , counselors , Deaconess and probation officers .

In helping professions, the suffering, sick, lonely person should be the focus (thought of humanity ). There are very different fields of work: Counseling , education , therapy , nursing or care for the elderly , social work , social education , medicine , pastoral care, etc.

Members of the helping professions sometimes suffer from the so-called helper syndrome, which is widespread in this occupation . Years of selfless work in helping professions for other people can result in increasing exhaustion, dejection and a feeling of inner emptiness and meaninglessness. Burn-out often leads to incapacity for work , sick leave and, in the final stages, to early retirement. These symptoms can also be observed in housewives .

Gender ratio

→ Main article : List of proportions of women in the professional world

In most of the helping professions, the proportion of women is over 80%. In the private and voluntary sector, too, care and welfare services are predominantly provided by women and remain largely invisible. Compared to the professions in the MINT subjects , skilled workers in the helping professions are less socially recognized and less paid, although care work is one of the fastest growing areas of social work. In the helping professions, there is a clear division of labor based on gender hierarchies. Since 2016, Equal Care Day has been using an international day of action on February 29 to draw attention to the fact that the lion's share of care work is done by women and is committed to more appreciation and fair distribution of care work.

Web links

• Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM): What happens when nothing works? Burnout information for prevention, immediate measures and long-term offers of help for HR managers in the EKM . PDF, 4 pages

See also

• Pastoral care
• Relationship work
• Care work
• Burnout syndrome
• Service occupation
• Helper syndrome
• Charities

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Employment Agency, Statistics Professions at a Glance , accessed on June 8, 2019: Proportion of women in medical health professions: 82.4%, elderly care: 83.7%, education / social work: 83.1%, education / social, domestic professions / Theology 83.8%
2. ↑ Care, Migration and Gender Equality by Ursula Apitzsch and Marianne Schmidbaur, Federal Agency for Civic Education, September 7, 2011, accessed on June 8, 2019
3. ↑ Employment Agency, Statistics Occupations at a Glance , accessed on June 8, 2019: In the so-called MINT occupations, the mean gross monthly wage in 2018 was € 3,782, the proportion of women was 15.4% and the proportion of skilled workers was 59.5%. In comparison, the mean gross monthly wage in 2018 in the medical health professions was € 3,782, the proportion of women was 82.4% and the proportion of skilled workers was 58%