By Sahar Foladi
Gone are the days where your gender would determine your career pathway and doors of opportunities slammed shut for women.
It’s safe to say that a lot of male dominated industries are more welcoming of women than ever.
Carly is taking full advantage of the state governments Free Tafe Courses studying certificate IV in building and construction and certificate III in carpentry at Trades Institute of Victoria (TIV) in Dandenong.
“It’s really good. It’s fairly compacted because we do all the course work in a year.
“Once we’re on the floor doing the building work the time flies.”
TIV provide building and construction courses across Melbourne with their head office in Williamstown.
Currently women make up 13 per cent of the construction industry however only 2 per cent are in trades and the rest work in administrations or support roles.
Carly is part of that 2 per cent. She called it quits with her IT job of 20 years after having enough of the screen time and switched to a career that would not have been available to her decades ago.
“I was always interested in the building industry but never had the opportunity when I left school (in 1997) and didn’t consider that as a pathway.
“It wasn’t an option presented to women that much. It was mostly the young guys that would leave school and do trade.”
Now there’s a push to include females in the construction industry to deal with the labour shortage through state government initiatives such as ‘She Built It’. It is part of Labor’s Building Equality Policy which requires women to be represented in at least 3 per cent of the trade roles.
At a mature age now Carly has started seeing the shift in society and as part of “getting older” she’s also become confident.
“I think times have changed a lot. My experience has been so far that people in the industry are open to female workers because of the unique set of skills we bring in terms of attention to details.”
The National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) are headed to achieve their goal for women to make up 25 per cent of the industry by 2025 and TIV are playing their part in helping with this culture change.
It’s never too late to start anything but for Carly she wasn’t too keen to do a traditional apprenticeship and that’s when she came across TIV.
“I came across TIV when they had the fast track apprenticeship where you do trade school for a year and do 800 hours work experience.”
She plans to stay with TIV longer to pursue her Diploma in building and construction to ultimately establish her own building company.
TIV have been thriving in Dandenong since being opened by then-mayor Jim Memeti last year.
Training director Peter Giannopoulos said the plan to build a second home for TIV rose from a high demand as a lot of similar centres are in Cheltenham.
“We know Dandenong is a growth corridor and there’s continuous demand for skilled labour in Dandenong and surrounding suburbs.
“We try to meet the needs of the market by introducing various courses to Dandenong.”
Construction workers are among the list of skill shortages in Australia.
According to Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data there’s a 24.2 per cent job vacancy rate in construction in February 2023.
It has dropped dramatically from a 30.3 per cent job vacancy rate in May 2022.
