Would you advise your DD to go into the trades?

[ItsFineReally]

1. University fees are now significant
2. We're always in need of plumbers, plasterers, electricians etc
3. Women often find it hard to find good flexible work while their children are young

Considering the above, why aren't there more women in the trades, and have you raised it as an option with your daughters when discussing future job roles?

Is this your WFH job, or your what the f* job? Made me chuckle

I potentially would, but would advise that if you do that work on big construction crews there is still a lot of misogyny. I know a pretty tough woman who was an electrician for a while and even she found the sexism pretty tough on site.

It’s a great idea, I suppose ultimately it depends on her personality and what the trade is as some of them involve lots of quite physical and dirty work and it won’t be for everyone which I say as someone who does a traditionally masculine job

I know of a female tiler but she has always been quite blokeish in her demeanour, is capable of lugging heavy equipment about on her own and more than gives as good as she gets if anyone feels the need to comment. Lots of women would prefer to hire women if there was an option.

I spent most of my career in construction and most of the other time, in trying to encourage women into construction/running programmes to facilitate this.

From my experience, women are still seen as being there with the 'permission' of men, and have to work twice as hard to 'prove' themselves, have to work alongside the continual sexist and often disturbing attitudes of people who should have your back, and in the end, often just give up and go work in offices.

And that's before the long hours to get jobs done especially in the summer, and the potential to have to move around or work away for long periods on jobs around the country.

However it can be exceptionally rewarding, particularly seeing projects that you worked being used by hundreds of thousands of people every day.

I'd recommend that she take advantage of an apprenticeship in a medium to large company, learn as many aspects of a trade that she enjoys, and then aim to set up on her own or with a partner, mainly for safety reasons, and then work for herself. Plumbing and P&D are often good trades to go into as the materials are not quite as heavy as other trades.

🤣🤣🤣 whoops! Bit of both? 🤣

Two women I grew up with went on to be electricians both now work in maintenance/maintenance management in London with 6 figure salaries. I've worked in the canary wharf area and the other specialises in maintenance in storage for dinner if the big museums/galleries.
I wouldn't discourage it!
Having said that my brother is a plumber again London non domestic and earns very well, but self employed and that comes with risks, he also says he can't see working largely on his knees until retirement age.
I also have an aunt who became an electronic engineer later in life via the on job qualification route and she knows had a consultant role in the field and earns well.
None of the above went to uni

I would say though if you want to make money in the trades it's not flexible and the starts are early

No. Dd is a small, very slight, very academically bright girl with teeny little hands!

Agree with tiling, so much work about and could pick and choose! Could specialise in high end kitchen tiling or similar and build up good relationships with interior designers, many of whom are women too.

In fact, being a small jobs expert good at dealing with high end clients would also be a good option.

I’m more interested in pointing DD in the direction of work that doesn’t tie her to a single place, particularly if that place is very expensive, i.e. London, which is what’s happened to DH and me, whether that’s to be an accountant or a hairdresser.

Also good to look at things where you can’t be replaced by AI.

Well I wouldn’t be advising my daughter that she needed to be the one to flex when kids were young, I’d be teaching her to find a partner who did his 50 percent. Terrible advice there OP.

There was an interesting feature on R4 Women's Hour yesterday about a couple who are renovating their house using all female construction workers. They can't find female roofers anywhere and have had to bring in scaffolders from Bradford despite the project being in the south. The issue seems to be in finding businesses willing to train women, as there are a lot of opportunities once they are skilled.

However, we all know its hard to get trades in. They very much dictate their own time, we only think we dictate it

But if it's 50:50, there's still an element of flexibility required, no?

Not that that was my point. To clarify, I've seen many threads on here regarding flexible working but rarely see working in the trades advocated as an option.

I work in construction (large sites) and no the trades aren’t particularly flexible they need to be on site early, often there late and occasional weekends. Often dependent on sharing lifts as not everyone gets a company van.

It’s also my experience that self employed domestic trades often work long hours.

However the construction industry is moving to be much more inclusive and flexible, I work for a main contractor as a quantity surveyor on multi million pound projects and I have the flexibility to work around school runs and work from home. I did a degree full time but there are so many routes these days such as t levels b Tecs and I’m finding that most people are doing a degree whilst employed so part time. Universities have seen this trend and now offer accelerated degrees where you can get you degree in 3 years doing 1 day a week and working the other 4.

Lots of other opportunities as well such as planning and design management.

I would love it - she does DT but is not taking it for GCSE. She's very logical in doing flat-pack but I don't think the DT lessons are doing anything much to talk about trades - more engineering and product design. She's far better at coding to be honest, so not sure she is physical enough which is a shame. Would love a carpenter!

Plumbing is still very heavy- you need to be able to lift up a toilet, or put a bath in place.

I would. However it’s still very sexist, not only within the business, but also customers.

the mentality that women aren’t as good as men in physical jobs still persists. yes some women prefer to employ women from a safety aspect, but many more would prefer a man because they perceive men to do a better job

You only have to look at local FB pages to see people asking for recomendations. “Man with van”. “Lad wanted for x job” “anyone know a man who can plumb in my dishwasher” etc etc.

it would take a woman se a lot longer to get established as it would need word of mouth for people to believe her abilities are equal to a man.

I'd ask her where her interests lie. Also I'd think about pay expectations. And both of those things need to be thought about in terms of her whole-life career, and what motivates her.

With my job it required a degree, paid poorly initially but the pay ramped up as I got experience, overtaking the level of pay that a tradesperson would get. I'm late 50s and can happily work flexibly from my home. I wouldn't want to be doing a very physical job now. I would have been bored without the significant intellectual challenge I have in my role.

I've changed jobs several times over my lifetime, but my educational choices kept my options open.

I work in the trades I’m the in house maintenance manager for a medium building but have looked after estates with almost 100 sites. There is some level of flexibility but there can also be late nights and weekends. I would love to see more woman on my team and on the outside contractors I bring in.

I left school with no qualifications and now earn not far off a six figure salary.

Subject to finding the right apprenticeship I think it’s a great idea.

i currently use a female electrician, gas engineer and chimney sweep as they’ve all been recommended and are great.

Interestingly they all have kids and it’s a really flexible for them from that perspective too as they are self employed.

I'm not a trade, but work onsite in a more neiche role with joiners, plumbers etc. most sites are fine, I do have a male co worker which might help how I'm treated. Some guys are loud and swearing when working, can be drama queens if they can't get stuff done, the are laughed at by everyone when they leave the site. Trades are huge gossips/bitchy about lazy, dodgy workers. You can pick up other jobs on site, if you do your work well, which we do. Toilets are always manky, guys love to use ladies toilets? If you turn up at agreed time, do your job without drama it's noticed. Aggressive angry men are still around but most tradies are not like it, i can laugh a lot on site with strangers i just met.

I was a mechanic for a few years. My family were worried about sexism and men being rude to me. I had a few comments and I just told them immediately with venom that I am not one to be messed with and after a few weeks the dust settled and the men were actually very respectful of me, we had a friendly relationship and to be honest the lads were over accommodating once they realised I new what I was doing.

I've been musing over this recently and wondering what's the "equivalent" of the trades that isn't male dominated - ie. a good solid job option (and relatively lucrative) but not requiring a degree or academic qualifications?

What's the traditionally female equivalent?
Things like hairdressing and childcare are much less well paid I think.

My DD is keen on university but if she wasn't then I would encourage her. There are plenty of women in trades in my country so it's not so unusual. I recently retrained as an aircraft mechanic and there were 4 other women on my course, all of whom have gone on to get jobs in the trade whereas not all the men on my course found jobs. It's particularly suited for smaller framed people with smaller hands as you often need to get into small spaces - as the only female mechanic in my workplace I am always called for when it's a small space!