TRAINING UPDATE
Apprentices are mostly male: What a surprise
My daughter is an engineer. Until the late twentieth century, engineering was considered a non-traditional occupation for females. By the time she was enrolled at the University of Waterloo in Systems Design Engineering, there were lots of women in the program. In fact, another department – Chemical Engineering – had a female majority. Medicine was a non-traditional occupation for women until at least the 60’s, even though there had been female doctors in the nineteenth century. By the 1970’s some medicine faculties had more women students than men. A recent national survey by the Canadian Council of Directors of Apprenticeship indicates that most of those mastering a trade are males, aged 25 to 39. In the Apprenticeship Branch in the 1980’s and 90’s, we had an initiative to increase the numbers of women in trades – other than Hairstyling. There have been some successes, but obviously the payoff has not been great. I know from meeting them that there are women working in construction – as project coordinators, estimators, etc. – and a few in the trades but, unfortunately, only a few. I remember that in the late 80’s it appeared that BC and Alberta had more women in non-traditional trades than we had in Ontario – not a lot more, but a significantly greater number. Closer investigation revealed that the difference could largely be accounted for by the fact that those provinces included Auto-Parts Counterperson as an apprenticeable trade. Alberta’s numbers in the same “traditional” blue-collar trades as in Ontario were not better than ours. We have very few female Construction Craft Workers. We’d like more, but we have to be realistic – we’re not out to recruit people who won’t succeed in the trade. The trade is physically demanding – involving pick and shovel work, wheeling, carrying, climbing. And working in dust, mud, heat, cold. That doesn’t work for all men, let alone women. Then there’s the question of whether or not the work would attract women. A Training Director in the US told me that the number of women members in his local of the Laborers Union had declined when traffic control became part of apprenticeship and was no longer a separate, specialized job. Women apparently were not interested in taking the training and performing the other tasks of a Construction Craft Laborer (as Construction Craft Worker is known below the border). And there are real cultural barriers – a survey of tradesmen in the 90’s indicated most wouldn’t direct their sons to careers in the trades and very few even thought of the idea of a trade career for their daughters. Construction trades should be open to any individuals interested, we can work to reduce barriers, but promotional efforts to recruit more women and girls are unlikely to have much payoff.
Comments? Email jmclaren@506tc.org