Don’t miss the opportunity of Gabrielle’s recovery to attract women into trades

Friday, 24 February 2023

Volunteers helped in the Waiohiki area in Hawke’s Bay following Cycline Gabrielle.

Lana Hart is a Christchurch-based writer, broadcaster and tutor.

OPINION: A couple of weeks after the Canterbury earthquakes, a community board member I know visited the damaged sites behind Christchurch’s central city cordon. “It’s a man’s world out there,” she reported back, describing streets lined with heavy machinery drivers, civil engineers and road crews.

Dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle sounds like a similar scene. As central government money pours into the regions most affected, it is often skilled trade workers – both paid and volunteer – that locals are most reliant on to remove silt, repair bridges and roads, and rebuild damaged homes and businesses.

Between 85 and 97% of the trades workforce, depending on how you define it, is male. Whatever the number, our country’s roads, buildings and infrastructure networks are built, both historically and currently, mostly by people drawn from only half of the country’s population.

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But in a country hungrier than ever to source tradespeople for a labour market that was already struggling to find enough truck drivers, drain layers and carpenters, it’s more crucial than ever to draw from a broader pool of workers.

Employers want to hire female trades workers, the new network of vocational education, which now includes work-based training organisations, wants to train them, and the labour market has plenty of work for them.

Further, working in construction and trades no longer requires the physical strength that some argued held women back in the past. The increased use of machinery and heightened health and safety regulations on worksites have demoted brute strength as a prerequisite for these jobs.

Working in roading, for example, involves driving tractor-like machines or heavy rollers, identifying road hazards and managing traffic. As one builder says, “it’s more important to be physically fit than physically strong”.

Despite a strong case for attracting more women into construction and trades, and organisations like BCITO and Women in Trades working hard to do so, New Zealand’s figures remain stubbornly low.

At the time of the Canterbury quakes, more than 41,000 women worked in trades, or about 3% of the sector’s workforce. At the last census, this figure had climbed by 15,000, to roughly 4% of the construction and trades workforce. Let’s hope the data from next month’s census shows a starker rise.

So how can we attract more women into the industry sectors where they are so desperately needed?

Traditional trades like building and construction stubbornly remain male-dominated sectors.

For one, the workplace culture of trades needs to change. Female tradies continue to find their male-dominated workplaces unwelcoming, such as not having access to toilets, questions about their sexuality or sexual orientation, and a steady flow of sexist comments and innuendo.

A roofer recently described to me how his company had to erect visual blocks around the worksite rather than risk the all-male team goggling at the students at the private girls’ school next door. It’s an incredible fact that, in 2023, female builders in New Zealand still “hear guys from up on the scaffolds just whistling out”.

We need different and more incentives for women to choose jobs in trades so these toxic work cultures become more diversified and respectful for everyone.

Part-time work is so important to women returning to the workforce after having children, but very few trades jobs are part-time. Last week’s national Trade Me jobs in construction and roading showed nearly full-time 1500 vacancies, but only 16 part-time vacancies. There were nearly 300 vacancies for contract and casual roles, but women often need reliable, consistent employment when raising a family.

A reliance on full-time workers is one of many examples of how the trades sector is set up to favour male workers. Forged in an era when women rarely participated in the sector except in administrative roles, many construction and trades companies need to rethink their business models to accommodate the needs of female staff, if they are to attract enough skilled talent.

BCITO has set some ambitious goals for women working in construction trades jobs. In two years, it aims for women to comprise 10% of all BCITO apprentices, from the current rate of 3%. By 2040, it hopes 30% of all workers in construction trades roles are women.

But central government could contribute more to the achievement of these goals too. Short or micro-courses for women in trades could offer cash incentives for successful completion. Childcare costs, a significant consideration for working mothers, could be subsidised for women working in lower-paid roles at the beginning of their trades careers. Better guidelines for secondary school career advisers to encourage more female school-leavers into the trades would go a long way to addressing this labour shortfall.

These days, Cantabrians are enjoying a refreshed, “cool”, and liveable city after the rubble of our town only 12 years ago, thanks to the tens of thousands of people who contributed to its recovery. But an opportunity was missed to engage more women in Canterbury’s physical rebuild.

Cyclone Gabrielle presents another chance to rebalance our trades sector by incentivising women to join the workforce on which so many New Zealanders now rely.