An Australian of the Year nominee has called out the toxic tradie culture plaguing Aussie job sites as preventing more women from progressing in the industry.
A carpenter and builder by trade, Joanne Farrell was awarded the Australian Capital Territory’s Australian of the Year 2024 nomination last month, thanks to her efforts to boost female representation within a male-dominated construction industry.
In 2020, she founded Build Like A Girl, a not-for-profit program supporting women to enter the trades by matching them with pre-apprenticeship entry-level training and female mentors to help guide their journey to success.
But the job is far from complete when it comes to providing more women with a level playing field on-site, according to Jo.
She told Build-it that high levels of sexual harassment and sexist commentary were holding women back and even causing many to leave the industry altogether.
“Predominantly, it’s down to the culture on job sites – it’s the language and the things that are said (to women),” she said.
“Every couple of weeks, I have one of the girls coming to me about sexual harassment. Just last week, we had a really bad incident.”
“If it’s not that, it’s constant comments like ‘you can’t do this job’ or ‘you’re not strong enough to lift that’.”
“The industry has not evolved on a level to make women feel comfortable at the workplace.”
Bad habits fuelling sexist behaviour
Jo says those toxic traits are fueled by a poisonous culture of drinking, gambling and ignored mental health issues, which were still rife on many of Australia’s largest job sites.
“It’s a shitty environment for men, let alone for women,” she told Build-it.
“All of those negative aspects that surround the industry filter into the industry and cause more problems.”
Despite ongoing skills shortages, only 2% of construction-related trade jobs in Australia are filled by women.
Programs like Build Like A Girl and government initiatives have helped raise awareness and recruitment numbers for female tradies in recent years, especially among high school leavers.
However, the sector still faces female retention issues, with many women walking away shortly after entering the industry – some blame the workplace environment cultivated on-site.
“Where we are falling down now is we are not able to keep female tradies,” Jo said.
“When we track female participation at apprenticeship level, we find 74 per cent drop out within the first year.”
More female tradies could fix worker shortage
Build Like A Girl has tried to negate some of those issues female tradies are set to face by providing access to support networks alongside training to teach women how to address sexual harassment and sexist language.
However, Jo says the problem should not be down to women to try and fix alone, calling on men and the industry to come together and provide a solid foundation to support female tradies, which could solve some other issues on the way.
“The problem with our industry is we stand around a lot and talk about the problem – but we don’t do anything about it,” she said.
“Having more women and more diversity is going to be a positive. We have a vast skills shortage at the moment. Employers can’t find people, but we still have all these biases pushing people away.”
The Australian of the Year 2024 national awards will occur on 25 January 2024.
