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I love reading about women who have followed their heart and pursued a career in the trades industry. It’s interesting to read about their thought process as they worked out what type of trade they wanted to pursue. Sometimes the choice in apprenticeship can be limited to the opportunities available.
I recently had an email from a female reader that asked whether a plumbing apprenticeship would suit her because she was thinking of becoming a plumber but wasn’t sure whether she could handle the work. It lead to me to ask the question, what trades are more suited for women in the workplace? And should such a question be even contemplated?
In my experience as an apprentice, I thought about this question a lot and truly believed that certain tasks were more suited to men. But I based this assumption on my own limitations, not on the skills and abilities of other women in the trades industry as a whole.
I’ve always believed that if you have the passion and determination to give a trade a go, you work hard and believe in yourself, you are capable of achieving a successful career in the trades.
Some of the female tradies that I have had the pleasure of meeting and working alongside with are plumbers, mechanical (air conditioning) plumbers, painters, electricians, carpenters, cabinet makers and building and construction project managers.
When I was a second year apprentice, my dad was impressed to see two female apprentice cabinet makers working on a larger office joinery unit when he had to deliver a sink that needed to be cut into a kitchen bench top. I was with him at the time when he asked the manager what he thought about hiring girl apprentices and his answer was this: They’re slower than our boy apprentices but their attention to detail is excellent and they have never stuffed up a measurement yet.
If we scrapped the whole gender comparison from trades altogether, maybe women wouldn’t need to prove themselves on site. Wouldn’t it be great if an apprenticeship was given to an individual because of their keen interest to give the trade a go, not because of what is between their legs or assumptions made about one’s strength and ability?
That’s why it pleases me to hear about manufacturers like Hyundai Construction Equipment offering their own courses in equipment operation that are not gender specific.
I would love to hear from other tradies (male or female) on why you chose a specific trade over another? If you don’t work in the trades, do you think there are certain trades or parts of a trade that should be left up to our men to handle?
Linking up with Essentially Jess for I Blog on Tuesdays.
This is a sponsored post and has been written in accordance to my disclosure policy.
