STEFFANI COOPER
26, CARPENTER, LEADING HAND
Right now, Cooper is on a building site somewhere in northern NSW, alongside a 14-member, all-male crew of chippies, bricklayers, sparkies and labourers. She’s the only female onsite, she’s the leading hand, and she’s there for two reasons.
One, she never could sit still, and two, she never could take no for an answer.
“When I left school in Brisbane, I started studying communication at uni, but then left and did a ski season, went back to uni, then left again, did another ski season, went back to uni and started doing business instead, and that was more interesting but I still really hated sitting still behind a computer,” Cooper says.
“I remember being so stressed out because I knew I was on the wrong path.” A cut hand in a burger cafe, however, would set her on the right one. “My partner, Cass, was doing a reno on her burger shop and she was helping the tradies, but when she cut her hand, I stepped and I just loved it straight away. It felt exactly right. One of the chippies said to me ‘you’re really good at this, you should do an apprenticeship’.”
It was 2018, and so began Cooper’s quest to get on the tools. “It was so frustrating,” she says. “It took me about a year to find an apprenticeship. I sent out so many resumes, and I do think a lot of it was about me being a girl. I got a lot of knockbacks. It was ‘we’re not sure if you’re strong enough, not sure if you can handle this’. It was so disheartening not to even be given a shot.”
When Cooper saw a building company call out for volunteers to help build a laundromat for at-risk women, she was the first to sign up. Then she was the first person to turn up every day, and the last to leave. “I was determined to show them what I could do, and when that job finished, they took me on as a labourer.”
Six months later, they offered her an apprenticeship. Now a fully fledged chippie, her next step is to get her builder’s ticket, and complete her online drafting course. She also wants to encourage other women to join her on the tools.
“When I started out, I had to work so much harder than the other labourers, you know, to prove my worth. But once you have proven you can do the job, I’ve actually found the sites really friendly and a lot of fun. There’s a lot of banter, and I can give as good as I get. I haven’t met another female builder yet, but I’m hoping I will soon.
“Just give it a crack. If you are like me, and can’t sit still, then this is a great alternative. Female apprenticeships in the industry are becoming more normal, and even if you don’t go the whole way, it’s a great way to learn life skills. How to hang a shelf, or fix a door, or build a house, and not needing a man to rely on is a pretty good feeling.”
Some of the old-school tradies – the ones with a Coke in hand, a ciggie in their mouth, and the great Australian builder’s crack – have become Cooper’s biggest cheerleaders. “If someone new comes on site, they’ll say ‘she’s all right’, which is, you know, the ultimate compliment.”
Steff Cooper is all right, she’s better than all right, she’s up a ladder somewhere, hammer swinging, exactly where she should be.