You might have seen in the news recently that a group of women had graduated from the Women Building Futures (WBF) iron workers training program and have recently entered the workforce at the North West Redwater Partnership. In honour of their accomplishment, we wanted to give you some fast facts about women in trades or non-traditional occupations in Alberta, Canada, and North America!
The WBF increased the number of ironworkers in Alberta by 13% in a single class.
There were a total of 1665 ironworker apprentices registered in Alberta in 2015. Out of this total there were only 84 women.
Men accounted for 93.4 per cent of all trades workers in 2011, with this proportion not having changed materially over the past two decades.
The average wage for a woman working in the service sector is 20 to 30 per cent lower than it would be in a skilled trade.
The number of women as registered apprenticeships in Canada tripled between 1996 and 2007.
The total employment of women in the construction industry is about 13%.
The top 10 male dominated occupations are all skilled trades.
Barbara Res was one of the very first women to manage a construction project. This is her on a Trump construction site in 1980.
In the past 5 years, there have been more than 12,000 women added to Alberta construction.
In North America, women comprise of 47% of workers in all occupations, but are only 2.6% of construction workers, and that statistic hasn’t changed in the last 30 years.
By 2020, it is estimated by Skills Canada that there will be a need of at least one million skilled trade workers. Women are a vastly underutilizes labour pool that could be the answer! Let us know what you think on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIN.