Women make up just 3 per cent of Australia’s skilled trades sector. Those who have made it in the industry say change is happening, but slowly.
Grinning ear to ear with a paintbrush in hand, Nikki Fischer reminisces about helping her dad out with their home renos as a kid in suburban Brisbane.
When her sister Jade became a plumber, Nikki followed in her footsteps.
“I thought that if she could do it, I could do it as well and here I am today,” she says.
Her parents were “taken aback” by her decision.
“They probably never thought that they’d have both their daughters wanting to do a trade instead of a uni degree,” Nikki says.
After her apprenticeship, Nikki landed a job as a fully qualified plumber at a company in Hobart.
She’s worked hard to earn respect and build her career over the years.
When the 27-year-old fell pregnant a year and a half ago, she braced for the worst from an industry known for its discrimination.
More than 2,000 kilometres away, on the NSW Mid North Coast, Indiana Lipscombe is also treading where few girls have been before.
“I never really liked school,” she says about leaving school at the age of 14.
“I’ve always wanted to work outdoors and with machinery.”
Sitting behind the controls of a bobcat is what makes her happy.
Now aged 19, Indiana is the first female civil construction trainee with Nambucca Valley Council.
Indiana is proud to have joined the traditionally male-dominated workforce, and she’s surprised by how few women have done so.
“I’d get in something [like a heavy vehicle] and the boys would say: ‘That’s the first girl to ever do that’,” she says.
The way Indiana sees it, she’s “making history in a way”.
It’s never been easy
In the 1990s, Heather Walker-Broose was a poster girl for women in the trades.
Standing proudly in front of her ute, a Sydney Morning Herald newspaper feature glowed about Heather’s success as a builder in charge of her own company at the age of 30.
But despite her successes in those early years, she was constantly reminded she was in a man’s world.
“You’d be working onsite with all of the fellas — people would come up and say: ‘Can I talk to the builder?’
“They’d go: ‘She’s over there’ and [the visiting tradesman would] laugh and go: ‘Yeah, right’.
“And they’d go: ‘No, she’s over there’.”
What the article didn’t mention was, arguably, her greatest success: getting an apprenticeship.
Heather spent about a year visiting scores of construction sites to get her foot in the door.
“It was quite demoralising, you know, it’s like any job you’re trying to get, and you get rejected,” Heather says.
There’s a sense of accomplishment in her voice when she recalls securing an apprenticeship with a builder in Gosford, NSW.
“I just said: ‘Look, you know, I’ll come and work for free for a while. And if you like me, can we look at an apprenticeship? And if you don’t, then that’s fair’.
“In the end, it was a great relationship. We got [on] like a house on fire.”
More than three decades and three kids later, Heather continues to work in the industry as a facilities manager with Snowy Hydro.
Dreams going unfulfilled
For every 100 tradies in Australia, there are three like Heather, Indiana and Nikki. The trio are thriving in their trade careers but they are a rarity.
According to the Women in Trades Project run by Charles Sturt University, the percentage of women in trades has increased from 1 to 3 per cent over the past 30 years.
It’s a sobering statistic for telecommunications technician Jess Vaughan.
“What it says is that there’s a lot of women who aren’t pursuing their dreams,” Jess says.
Jess works full-time as a trainer at a trade school in Adelaide, South Australia.
On the weekends, she runs her own telecommunications business fixing NBN connections and other maintenance.
Once the only woman in a room full of male apprentices, she’s now teaching the next generation – men and women — the tricks of the trade.
“I see it improving very much.
“I’m seeing the way the new generation of apprentices are interacting with one another and they’re not excluding and ostracising,” Jess says.
It’s very different from when Jess started her apprenticeship in 2009.
“My fellow apprentices they were not very accepting of the fact they had a female amongst them,” she says.
“I did have to prove myself a lot more in regard to some of the older guys.
“But once I showed them I was willing, able and capable, they warmed up and it was like I had a bunch of dads and uncles and brothers.”
Jess’s experience of having to prove herself among her male colleagues is not uncommon, according to lead researcher of the Women in Trades Project Donna Bridges.
“It’s like part of the qualification and if you’re a woman, then you don’t have that same credibility — so you have to prove yourself.”
Dr Bridges’ team is analysing female participation and identifying ways to boost numbers throughout the skilled trades sector.
“We’re interested in creating initiatives for industry where employers are more likely to think that they might be able to employ a man or a woman,” she says.
Dr Bridges says female tradies face different pressures from their male counterparts.
“We have found that women talk about [proving oneself] being a reason for leaving their work and no longer wanting to be a carpenter or an electrician,” Dr Bridges says.
Back in the classroom, trainer Jess is seeing a shift in male apprentices’ attitudes toward women.
But sexual harassment against women is an issue, even though the sector is working hard to stamp it out.
“It’s disappointing. But I think we’re getting to that point where we can actually deal with it in a better situation than where it used to be,” she says.
Having experienced sexual harassment as an apprentice, Jess remembers staying silent because it was the best option at the time.
“Being the only female onsite, I really didn’t want them to have more of a reason to exclude me.”
During her time as a trainer, Jess has found many men are unsure about how to work with women.
“They’re actually so scared to do and say the wrong thing now that they’re not even aware that they’re excluding a lot of people [by their behaviour],” she says.
“Their default is that everything is going to be sexually offensive to a woman.”
In her all-male classes, Jess starts a “confronting” conversation about sexual harassment, exclusion and discrimination rather than a one-way lecture that “steps around the issue”.
“It’s quite full-on for them to have the experience of a female in the industry having that conversation with them.
“But it does open them up, they start asking a lot of questions about ‘is this OK to do on a worksite? Is this not OK to do on a worksite?'”
To answer those questions, Jess poses another that often resonates on a personal level.
“Would say this to your mum? To your sister? To a female best friend? Do you think that they would find it offensive?
“If the answer’s ‘yes’ don’t do it.”
Classroom conversations like these are sparking small steps towards a cultural change.
“It’s only going to get better and better as this generation comes through and they train the next generation out in the field,” Jess says.
Finding ways to connect
Social media is becoming a crucial platform for women in the trades to create their own support.
From asking questions, sharing experiences to arranging meet-ups, the advent of social media is enabling women to connect with tradeswomen around the country like never before.
Mechanic Madeline Moore says a hashtag search for “female mechanics” on Instagram unlocked a wealth of knowledge and support when she was starting out.
“When I did my apprenticeship, there definitely weren’t many networking systems for women,” Madeline, from Coffs Harbour NSW, says.
Social media is a game-changer.
“It opens up this like crazy little world where there’s a lot of other women like you,“ she says.
“It’s nice to feel like you’re not the only one who is doing it.”
Now Madeline and her partner Max own a mechanical business, and she hopes to eventually help other women thrive in the trades.
“For me at the moment, my focus is growing my business,” Madeline says.
“But I hope to one day be in a position where I can help more people do what they want to do forever.”
Just getting on with it
As the presence of women grows across the trades sector, some are taking a different route.
At 21 years old, Louise Fisher lost four fingers on her right hand in an industrial printing accident.
Six months later, she started doing most things with her injured hand once again.
“It hasn’t really held me back at all,” Louise says.
Discontent with her career in the corporate world, Louise is harnessing her long love of handy work by starting her own business – filling a gap between DIY enthusiasts and skilled tradespeople.
“[I] love thinking outside the box, love problem solving, love fixing things.”
In a leafy street at Bellingen on the NSW Mid North Coast, Louise parks her van full of tools at her client Carmel’s house. She’s here to clean out the skylights and fix part of a footpath, among other things.
“All I can say to anyone out there who has had an injury: just get on with it,” Louise says.
“Nothing should stop you from reaching your full potential.”
What needs to happen next?
Sadly, many women aren’t reaching their full potential across the trades sector.
As more women take on apprenticeships in male-dominated trades, keeping them in the job is proving difficult, Electrical Trades Union (ETU) women’s officer Ellen McNally says.
“As a woman, as a mother, as a sister, I think that for a long time we’ve been trying to increase women in trades,” Ellen says.
“But we’re not changing the cultures that come with it.”
One of the biggest changes, these women say, needs to start with support for working parents.
Newcastle electrician Kristal Bartlett remembers the difficulties of returning to work part-time after the birth of her daughter.
Starting later than 5am to allow for the daycare drop off didn’t sit well with her colleagues at a former workplace.
“I had one guy in particular [who] used to hide my chair every day because he didn’t think I deserved to sit down after starting late,” she says.
The taunts soon evolved into being overlooked for promotions, tasked with menial jobs and not being offered the same opportunities as her full-time colleagues.
She’s now working in a new job, but her “great support network” remains crucial to juggling being a tradeswoman and a mum.
“My in-laws are fantastic. They come around at five o’clock in the morning to just sit on a couch while my daughter sleeps for two hours till they can drop her off at daycare,” she says.
She says the industry needs to be more flexible with working hours and create part-time positions to allow parents — men and women — to better balance work and family.
“Part-time positions for trades don’t exist. Sometimes they do if you’re one of the lucky ones that have a good relationship with an employer.”
Workplace shift
Plumber Nikki Fischer’s sister Jade — and others — have left the profession because workplaces aren’t so accommodating.
With this in mind, Nikki found telling her boss about her pregnancy confronting.
“I was shit-scared … I wasn’t really sure what the response from my boss would be,” she says.
“But it’s all worked out in the end.”
She says her employer was supportive throughout her pregnancy, maternity leave and returning to work part-time.
“It’s been all new for them, but they’ve been great.”
On the job site, her male colleagues — especially those with their own families – have been understanding.
“They couldn’t imagine what it would be like being the mother and being the tradesperson,” she says.
Companies like Nikki’s are working to better accommodate mums and dads.
High-voltage lines worker, Karina Hampton was still breastfeeding when she returned to work after having her third child.
She’s a program leader with TransGrid, which manages NSW’s high-voltage electricity network.
At her depot in Wagga Wagga, her employer worked with her to create an accommodating workplace.
“We ended up having a multi-purpose quiet room put into our depot that anyone could use. I used it to express [breastmilk] in there during the day,” she says.
It’s a far cry from her apprentice days when men walked through the female toilet area to access the male toilet.
“In that toilet, there were never sanitary bins. We were sort of a forgotten breed.”
TransGrid established its first parents’ room at its Ultimo offices in 2014. Now, there are parents’ rooms in all the company’s depots across regional and metro areas.
The company says it has created a pre-apprenticeship program for women and supports LGBTIQ+ women in the sector through its Rise Allies network.
“Women represent only 1 per cent of the trades in construction and engineering in Australia,” the company said in a statement.
“There is a whole talent pool not being accessed, because of historical barriers and a lack of opportunities for a woman to consider a trade as a career.”
Dr Bridges says her research has shown companies have been taking steps to make the workplace more attractive and accommodating for women.
TransGrid and other companies have “have incredibly good family-friendly policies”, Dr Bridges says.
But she thinks too few workers are taking them up.
“It’s difficult to get men and women to pick the policy up and use it because these can be seen as unpopular,” Dr Bridges says.
“Like if you use that policy, then you’re getting special treatment and that might be frowned upon by your colleagues.”
How does that change? Dr Bridges says the first step is to encourage employees to embrace these policies.
“I think the way of changing it is to get people to pick it up. Get it to become the new norm.”
For that to happen, the ETU’s Ellen McNally says employers need to be more proactive in changing cultures in their workplaces.
“We can’t keep trying to force women into an industry that’s not going to evolve and change with them,” Ellen says.
“We’re fortunate that those of us that stay in the trades and the industry for a long time fit in.
“But we seem to be the exception to the rule.”
