Female tradies face grim reality

Female tradies are shortening their names to sound masculine and applying to more than 30 jobs before they’re considered for a role, in a disheartening trend industry experts say needs to change.

Gender stereotypes and discrimination in the workplace are deterring young girls from becoming tradeswomen, a recent parliamentary inquiry into the Perceptions and Status of Vocational Education and Training (VET) found.

Just 30.9 per cent of all apprentices and trainees across the nation are women. They make up only 1.6 per cent of apprentice plumbers, 5.2 per cent of apprentice electricians and 2.5 per cent of all bricklayers and carpenters collectively.

Meanwhile, female VET and TAFE graduates are struggling to secure work, with some employers hanging up on women applying for a trade role. Empowered Women in Trades chief executive and founder Hacia Atherton said the reality tradeswomen faced was “heartbreaking”, adding some didn’t have access to female sanitary products or changing facilities.

“The (workplace) culture is not serving any human being in the industry right now and that significantly needs to change to be able to retain and attract more women,” she said.

It comes as the Master Builders Association predicts the construction industry needs to attract 90,000 tradies nationally in the next 90 days to meet the federal government’s target of building 1.2 million homes in the next five years.

While the number of tradeswomen to have commenced training had almost doubled in Victoria between 2017 and 2022 to 4336, Ms Atherton said women could help solve skill shortages if the industry simply embraced them.

Swinburne University of Technology trades, engineering and technology director Bryan Ornsby said changes in material, equipment and OH&S standards meant “muscular men” were no longer needed to do the heavy lifting.