This Barbie is a tradie

It’s no secret women are underrepresented in trades across a range of sectors. Women are discouraged from pursuing trade careers, facing resistance, bias and a lack of representation.

Despite these obstacles, women continually break barriers and challenge stereotypes, demonstrating their competence and skill in various trade professions and paving the way for a more inclusive and diverse workforce.

The saying ‘anything you can do, I can do too’ may have been around for many decades, but it’s still as relevant as ever for women in pursuit of equal opportunities. 

Take the Barbie movie campaign. With the historical significance of the Barbie empire and a $100 million marketing budget, this film has been one of the most trending topics in popular culture this year. And the starring ads? Bold posters of each Barbie character with the tagline stating their jobs – This Barbie is President, This Barbie is a diplomat, This Barbie is a doctor – daring viewers to appreciate their defiance of traditional gender stereotypes associated with certain professions.

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In male-dominated industries, the message that women can do the same jobs as men, and excel in that work is slowly catching on – but there is a long way to go. 

This article explores the current state of women in trades in Australia, the crucial role of the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, and the efforts being made to encourage and support more women to pursue trade careers.

This Barbie is a statistician 

Looking at the statistics for Australia, there’s significant gender disparity in the trades. 

Just 3% of tradies are women and hold only one in every 100 apprenticeships (Sydney Morning Herald, 2022). 

If we dive deeper into specific industries and trades, The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found that the construction industry held the largest share of payroll jobs worked by men (81.5%) in 2022.

The ABS found in 2021 that over 98% of plumbers, bricklayers and stonemasons, sheetmetal trades workers, carpenters, roof tilers and concreters are men. 

Research by Dr Sarah Oxenbridge, Professor Rae Cooper and Professor Marian Baird from the University of Sydney Business School, ‘One of the boys’ (2019), found the way women are perceived in automotive work settings can create negative workplace environments. Instances are highlighted of women struggling to secure apprenticeships, and facing gender-based harassment in the workplace when they do secure an apprenticeship.

In 2023, the NSW Government found women make up only 2% of qualified workers in key industries such as building and automotive.

In March this year, the NSW Government released their Women in Trades survey, with the aim to use the feedback to help employers understand how to recruit more women into trades. 

Surprisingly, the survey found 71% of people would recommend a trade career to a woman they know. Alongside this encouraging finding, the survey also found there were many critical barriers that hindered such recommendations. The results found unfair treatment was reported more than twice as often as any other barrier to recommending a trades job to women. Other barriers included safety, discrimination, and lack of flexibility and interest. 

This Barbie is an apprentice 

The VET sector has a crucial role to play in encouraging and supporting women to pursue and succeed in a trade career. 

Over the next two years, there’ll be 200,000 new trade jobs across different sectors in Australia. With such high demand for trade jobs, employers need to attract more workers – and including women in the workforce becomes essential.

The VET sector has an important role in: 

• Increasing the appeal of trades to raise women’s level of participation 
• Facilitating change to remove cultural and societal barriers
• Supporting women’s learning to maximise vocational outcomes.

RTOs who deliver apprenticeship, traineeship and work-based learning programs can use their strong connections with employers to ensure unsafe cultures and discrimination is addressed. Training organisations can use their programs and connections to help more women secure apprenticeships, and also collect and take action on feedback from their female learners about their apprenticeship experience, supervisors and the host employer.

This Barbie is a tradie

Despite the many challenging barriers, more and more women across Australia are upskilling and reskilling into trade careers. And support for women in trades and non-traditional roles is on the rise. 

The Australian Government has committed $8.6 million to the Australian Skills Guarantee in the Federal Budget. This applies to Commonwealth procurements in the construction sector, ensuring suppliers meet a minimum of 6% of all apprentice/trainee labour hours to be undertaken by women. The targets for women in construction projects will increase annually until the proportion of women in apprenticeships and traineeships more than doubles, and those in trade apprenticeships and traineeships triple by 2030 on Skills Guarantee projects.

This national investment, and further State funding, such as the NSW Connecting Women to Trades grant program, should come as no surprise. Australia’s GDP would increase 11% if the gender employment gap was closed, and businesses with at least 30% women in leadership positions are 15% more profitable (Victorian Government, 2021). 

Women who are succeeding in trades are empowering other women to follow in their footsteps. Empowered Women in Trades (EWIT), Trades Women Australia and The Lady Tradies Australia are just some of the organisations helping increase the participation of women in the trades workforce. 

There are also influential VET organisations like Busy At Work who have acknowledged they have less than 10% of females undertaking qualifications traditionally dominated by men and are working to improve this percentage through initiatives such as mentoring.

Though significant positive change for women in trades is still a work in progress, women continue to challenge norms and succeed in these male-dominated professions. As we move forward, continued support to empower women’s participation and success in the trades is essential. 

She is a carpenter, she is an electrician, she is a mechanic…she is a tradie.