Building Jobs Await, But It's Tough To Attract Women

As the building industry feels the squeeze of finding workers to fill vacant jobs, builders are looking to non-traditional sources to fill those jobs, including women. According to the Canadian Construction Association, the construction industry employs close to a million people and generates about $123 billion in economic activity a year. Even though women account for almost half of the total labour force, including prestigious professions like medicine and dentistry, they represent a very small proportion of the construction industry. While the number of men and women registered in apprenticeships has risen steadily in recent years according to Statistics Canada, women still represent only a small minority of that group. Only about seven per cent of the workers in transportation, trades and construction are women and and even smaller proportion of those are employed in the skilled trades - about two per cent, according to the Construction Sector Council. That proportion has remained steady since 1978. Women are considered one of the top sources for replenishing the construction workforce. In Ontario alone, for example, 55,000 workers will be needed between this year and 2015 to replace retiring workers and another 35,000 will be needed to help the industry keep pace with demand. This spring, the province announced that the Women in Skilled Trades program will spend $1.2 million for five training programs across Ontario to help low-income women prepare to work in the skilled trades sector, including welding, carpentry, landscaping and metal working. "We're feeling a double whammy - retirements and increased demand. Women are an important part of the answer," says George Gritziotis, executive director of the Construction Sector Council. ... Apprentices are paid to learn. At Tamarack, workers have a standard 44-hour week and the hours are predictable - all of which should appeal to women, especially those with family. Still, the physical demands of construction are one of the most often-cited reasons for why women aren't interested in construction jobs. Patenaude sees few women in the building trades, but would like to see more. Women are particularly good at understanding and anticipating the needs of customers. And they quickly learn that it's not just about muscle. "It's all mind work," he says.John Tapp, dean of the school of transportation and building trades at Ottawa's Algonquin College, says women back away from committing to an apprenticeship because they are concerned they won't have the physical strength to do the job. But while labourers have to be fairly sturdy, that's not true of workers in many of the other trades, where the money is excellent, the job and the technology are constantly evolving and there's the possibility of becoming your own boss, says Tapp. Most trades programs are four to five years long, and involve 24 weeks of in-school training. Of the 2,600 apprentices signed on to Algonquin programs every year, only a handful - at most a few dozen - are women, says Tapp. And these are mostly in the area of design. "Despite the best efforts of a number of agencies, there hasn't been a shift yet," says the educator. Kaiser, the former philosophy student, can understand why women would back away from the trades. The environment was, and is, "sexist to the extreme," she says. When she did her apprenticeship, there was one woman for every 60 men. Would-be customers still often ask her if the company belongs to her husband or her father. She believes she loses some jobs because she is a woman. She would love to hire women, but they're impossible to find. "I always feel it's like the final frontier." http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/135165

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