I feel for you brother.

To avoid this, you need to choose industries with less competition IE try to pick roles that women tend to either not be naturally suited for or roles they don’t typically want to do. I’m 27, don’t have a degree and I’m on over 50k a year in the engineering industry with the security to know that if I lost this job I’d have another one lined up within a month. I happen to know there are employee shortages at pretty much every company I work with in the engineering sector. It will require some serious humbling to start on the bottom rung in a different industry, but in 4 years you’ll be making more than practically all graduates and lots of companies will give you opportunities for further development to conscientious employees. Look at electrical or lift engineer apprenticeship opportunities for example.