Headed towards a ‘shecession’?
support women to retrain, that apprenticeships and trades are targeted towards women.’’
There was nothing specifically aimed at women, but Genter had written to Finance Minister Grant Robertson and was working closely with her colleagues on the education and workforce committee.
‘‘It’s not just women, it’s women over the age of 50, Ma¯ ori and Pasifika women, and we need to take those lenses into our specific Government policy and support to make sure that people are supported during this time.’’
Quantity surveyor Stacey Mendonca has been working in the construction industry for about 30 years, and says the number of women joining the trades is increasing.
‘‘We have certainly seen changes – we have a lot of clients who are women, and a lot of consultants who are women, and now we are seeing a lot of tradeswomen.’’
Mendonca, who is currently chief estimator at Pacific Doors, is president and cofounder of the National Association of Women in Construction, which has nearly 500 members.
‘‘I have seen there are more women willing to do apprenticeships, and the other thing is they’re older women. There are still young women, but there are women who decided they’re going to have a change of career.
‘‘I spoke to one woman, and she’s a joiner, she’s been making timber furniture at home for a number of years, she wanted to do a joinery apprenticeship.
‘‘So we are seeing more, and we are seeing a different type of apprentice – it’s no 17-year-old fresh-faced boy any longer.’’
Hutt Gas & Plumbing general manager Colleen Upton had been a very strong advocate for women plumbers, Mendonca said.
There are only about 44 female plumbers in the country, and Upton had employed five over recent years. She currently employed three, the minimum number to ‘‘normalise’’ it in the workplace, Upton said.
Some female clients requested women plumbers. One plumber not only fixed the hot water cylinder, but she also folded all the towels back into place and didn’t leave a mess.
On another occasion, a female plumber who was putting in a gas heater was found sitting at the kitchen table. The client asked if she wanted a cup of coffee, but the plumber was just checking the heater couldn’t be seen from the kitchen table.
‘‘It’s those sorts of considerations, and tidiness and reliability and courteous behaviour that women do without thinking and it’s possibly something that the industry needs to think more of,’’ Mendonca said.
The women are really proud of what they do, and aren’t in the industry as a default.
‘‘There are easier jobs, there are easier industries, so all the women that I know have got an underlying degree of passion because we want to be here.’’
There were transferable skills that applied to construction, such as multitasking, ease with paperwork and technology, focus on detail, and an ability to sell.
‘‘You think about the travel agents who really in a sense are mini project managers, when they sort out a complicated holiday they’re doing a lot of the tasks [of] an assisting project manager . . . I’m not saying they can walk into a project and run it, but a lot of projects need assistants.’’
Since Covid, the association had been asked to speak to girls at schools about considering a nontraditional career in construction.
‘‘It is meant to be one of the economic growth industries and it just unfortunately doesn’t employ many (women), so we need both women to think that construction is a viable place to work, and fulfilling and interesting and challenging.
‘‘I helped price Te Papa, my kids throughout their school lives said that mummy helped build Te Papa. We’re lucky enough to be in a place where we can contribute to people’s working and home lives.’’
Some barriers to women were reducing, such as the low numbers and isolation, sexist remarks, and sexist calendars, she said.
‘‘I can remember as a teenager, walking through a street in Sydney and the construction workers used to hold up numbers and rate you on your hotness as you walked past.’’
Some women were still excluded because they were female, she said, but it was less common than in the past. And modern tools, and health and safety guidelines, helped make the work easier.
‘‘There are still barriers from some people, but they are greatly, greatly reduced and that’s just people’s attitude.
‘‘The same way that guys take time off to either look after sick kids or new kids, that sort of thing is changing as well.’’
Her father was a builder and her mother a hairdresser, and Mendonca had always been interested in building although she had never showed any application in terms of actually doing it.
‘‘I had an uncle who was a quantity surveyor, and he just said one holiday in Year 12, ‘come and work for me’, and then I realised it was about numbers and money and organising.
‘‘He had an assistant who was a female, so I was in an office where there was a guy, my uncle, and a female, and so it didn’t really seem too unusual to me to join that industry.’’
She spent 24 years at Fletcher Building, and raised two sons, working part-time.
Warwick Quinn, chief executive of construction apprenticeship provider BCITO, said there had been encouraging growth in apprentice numbers, and in the employers willing to take them on.
The number of women in construction has grown from 3 per cent, or about 260 women, to 4 per cent, or about 460 women, in the past two years.
BCITO aimed for women to make up 10 per cent of apprenticeships by 2025, and 30 per cent of construction tradies by 2040.
There had been a change of attitude within the trades, with more employers prepared to take on women, and more women prepared to consider construction as a career, Quinn said.
Free fees, and the Apprenticeship Boost scheme that pays employers to take on apprentices, would make a big difference.