Yahoo Finance Tradies forced to change their names to get work: ‘Disheartening’
Less than a third of apprentices and trainees across Australia are females, and some say they are struggling to get a foot in the door.
Female tradies are shortening their names to appear more masculine in order to be considered for jobs, as they are knocked back by employers.
A recent inquiry into the Perceptions and Status of Vocational Education and Training (VET) found gender stereotypes, discrimination and lack of education were stopping young girls from becoming tradies.
When they do push through, some females are forced to use tactics like shortening their names - such as going from Charlotte to Charlie, or Christine to Chris - to get a foot in the door.
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Empowered Women in Trades chief executive and founder Hacia Atherton said some females weren’t even considered for interviews for apprenticeships.
“For a lot of women that want to get a plumbing apprenticeship [for example] when they apply and the employer sees a female applying, they even refuse to interview her,” Atherton told 3AW.
“That’s a bit of a disheartening trend that seems to happen. Gender doesn’t make you a good plumber or a bad plumber.
“It is your skills, your ability to problem solve, your ability to use your hands. It doesn’t matter if you’re a girl, or a guy, or non-binary person, if you’re good at the trade, you’re good at the trade.”
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Less than a third of all apprentices and trainees across Australia are females. They make up just 1.6 per cent of all apprentice plumbers, 5.2 per cent of electrician apprentices and 2.5 per cent of apprentice bricklayers and carpenters combined.
Tradie knocked back 200 times
Carpenter and builder Felicity Pettiford recently told Yahoo Finance she had “over 200 knockbacks” when she was searching for an apprenticeship.
“A lot of people didn’t want to hire a girl, a lot of people didn’t want to hire someone that was unlicensed and didn’t have their Ps, and a lot of people didn’t want to hire me because of how skinny and petite I was,” Pettiford said.
It ended up taking her 18 months to get her first apprenticeship and the 21-year-old earned just $12 per hour in her first year.
Atherton said she recently spoke to a woman who was knocked back by more than two dozen employers who were advertising for an apprentice.
According to BuildSkills Australia, 90,000 tradies need to join the industry in the next 90 days for the government to meet its target of 1.2 million homes by 2029.
“That’s just not going to happen if we don’t start changing our mindsets to see trades as not having a gender,” Atherton said.
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