With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1159085
SEPTEMBER 2019 BCBUSINESS 29 "What has happened in the past is, if you bring a woman onto a crew and she's not integrating well, they might move her to a different crew or a dif- ferent project. Or she might quit.... So what we're struggling with is reten- tion of tradeswomen, and that's one of the reasons for the Builders Code" —Lisa Stevens, chief strategy officer, B.C. Construction Association For 27-year-old Katalina Diston, who is learning to be a welder, the trades offer not just the prospect of steady, well-paid work but relief from societal pressures on women to look and dress in ways that prize physical attractiveness over skills and brains. "Most girls were prim and proper, getting their nails done," the red-haired single mother of two says of her high-school days. "I was in shop with the guys. The girls wanted noth- ing to do with me." These students signal a tectonic shift for the B.C. skilled trades sector, which is still 95-percent male. In an industry with a reputation for macho bluster, on-site bul- lying, gender discrimination and inflex- ible hours, growing the number of women tradespeople will make workplaces better for everyone, advocates say. With support from recent efforts by government and business to attract more female employees to this profession, women can also help the province tackle its looming shortage of workers for major construction projects. with classroom time, culminates in a trade credential, or ticket, from the Industry Training Authority BC (ITA). That designa- tion can be a British Columbia Certificate of Qualification or an Interprovincial Red Seal Endorsement, which boosts job mobility in Canada for more than 50 trades. Along with their leaders, the novices on this work site are "helping change the stigma of women in the trades," says Tracie Clayton, executive director of Hero- Work Victoria. Getting out of the locker room With women now represented in almost every sector, from politics to medicine, law to architecture, film production to polic- ing, why would they be stigmatized for picking up a hammer, wiring a building, laying pipe, digging a trench or pouring concrete? Because the trades continue to be "one of the last bastions of locker-room mentality," says Emelia Colman-Shepherd, reluctance to treat them as equals, Colman- Shepherd says. Over the past few decades, the 31-year- old explains, some tradespeople have been female, but women remain anomalies. Admittedly, it does take a tough cookie to endure a construction site—less because of the gruelling work than the hyper- masculinity. Colman-Shepherd's fellow BCCWITT coordinator, 56-year-old electri- cian Sandra Brynjolfson, recalls starting in the trades 20 years ago. Back then, it was "super rare to see another woman on the job site," says Brynjolfson, who is also here chatting with other female tradespeople. In her "sexist" union panel interview, a process that all apprentices must undergo for union membership, one of the interview- ers asked her, "If a guy says, 'Nice tits,' how are you going to react?" Taken aback, Bryn- jolfson replied, "Probably ignore them." Still, the remark made the former com- petitive softball player squirm, especially because it came from a union boss who was Our Place is project-managed by non- profit charity HeroWork Program Society, which organizes two Radical Renovations each year in B.C., helping other charities develop infrastructure for worthy causes. The 45 tradespeople range from electri- cians, carpenters, painters, plumbers and landscapers to flooring and heating, venti- lation and air conditioning ( HVAC) install- ers. Unusually, three of the six trade leads, or supervisors, are women, overseeing the landscapers, plumbers and electricians. As the young apprentices drag cables, climb ladders, weld, rivet and bolt, they're following their older colleagues into a career that should see them earn well above the average Vancouver salary of $57,000, without racking up debt from years of post-secondary studies. Their edu- cation, which combines on-the-job training an electrician and a coordinator for the BC Centre for Women in the Trades ( BCCWITT), which helps advance and retain female tradespeople. Changing the work culture means taking a jackhammer to some deeply entrenched ideas and norms. The construc- tion industry lags "20 to 50 years behind other sectors in gender equality," says Col- man-Shepherd as she strides around the HeroWork site, stopping to talk to volun- teers, helping build the mentoring network that women in the trades so crucially need. It's long been assumed that women don't have the grit and muscle to take up construction work that is risky and even dangerous, with early-dawn starts on sites that are often exposed to the elements. But dismissing their ability to cope with such challenges masks a conservative-minded supposedly protecting her interests. "I was 35 at the time and confident; I can't imag- ine how a young woman would have fared." Colman-Shepherd pipes up: "It would scare them—if not scare them off." Brynjolfson also recalls being singled out on the job site because of her gender. Once, a drywall installer, known as a mud- der, scooped up a large blob of plaster and gobbed it on her tool pouch, which was lying on the ground, perhaps out of mal- ice or a misguided sense of humour. She responded by taking her linesman pliers and punching holes in the wall where the man had just plastered. "Guess you missed a few spots," she quipped. But Brynjolfson also faced bullying, like when a male worker picked up her tools and threw them, then screamed in her face, fists clenched, for a perceived oversight. On