Goodbye Office Jobs – the Women breaking into Manual Trades
Over the decades, women have managed to secure work in virtually every field. From law, to medicine, to academia, female workers have clawed their way into trade after trade, tackling prejudiced thinking as they went. One area remains, though – a curious final bastion which is only now on the cusp of being disassembled: this is manual labour.
From electricians, to builders, to plumbers, only 1% of manual workers in Britain are women. This huge disparity can be partly attributed to simple sexism. One study found that more than half of female construction workers felt they had been treated worse than their male colleagues because of their gender. Change may be on the horizon, however. Annabel Hands, a member of the Woman and Manual Trades group, reported that “the doors have never been open to women like they are right now, across the whole front of the manual trades”. Hands predicts that “Things are going to turn around very quickly.” Behind this prediction is simple necessity.
Many manual trades are experiencing severe skills shortages, and encouraging more women to fill these roles could prove an effective solution. In the next five years, the UK will need 22,000 more plumbers, 17,000 more engineers, and a staggering 400,000 more builders. To achieve these huge recruitment goals, the government has set aside £60 million for encouraging young people – both boys and girls – into these professions. Similar schemes, which are particularly targeted at girls, are also sweeping the UK, with women currently working in these industries acting as ambassadors and role models.
Despite its traditionally masculine reputation, the manual trades can be particularly suitable for women because of their flexibility. Things are changing slowly, but women in the UK still provide the vast majority of childcare, so access to a job which is well-paid as well as flexible could be a huge boon for swathes of working carers. Especially for women who are single parents, the flexibility of choosing one’s own hours could make for more quality time with their children as well as reduced child-care costs. Women with children of school-age could also find this kind of work especially beneficial, slotting in jobs around school hours.
Flexibility is not the only perk of these jobs, though. Since many traders are self-employed, taking a career break to care for children is far less complicated, and they can pursue part-time work on their own terms. The multi-faceted nature of the work is yet another draw. Women who find themselves unsatisfied with repetitive work, which comes with certain office jobs, might find meeting new people and travelling incredibly refreshing. On top of this, these trades remain relatively well-paid – especially compared to female dominated fields such as nursing and teaching. Setting aside the problematic fact that jobs dominated by women tend to pay less, more women breaking into manual trades could be a step towards closing the gender pay-gap.
Clearly, a huge number of women could benefit from breaking into this kind of work. The trades themselves, though, could prosper just as much from an injection of female workers. Manual trades, unfortunately, have something of an image problem in the UK. In 2001 alone, 100,000 complaints were made to the Office of Fair Trading against plumbers, builders, and electricians. This is roughly 300 complaints each day. Although stereotypes are clearly at play, women tend to be considered more trust-worthy than men. More of them entering these professions, then, could give its reputation an apparently much-needed boost.
As well as this, female traders could help make their clients feel safer. According to Barbara Field, editor of Heating, Ventilating and Plumbing magazine, “Women often feel a lot more comfortable about opening the door to a woman”. She also pointed out that women are less likely to be patronising towards their female clients when explaining the work that needs to be carried out. Even today some male traders are guilty of assuming that female clients are clueless because of their gender. Finally, Field addresses the question of physical ability. In a backlash against women entering the plumbing profession, some male plumbers ask “is a woman strong enough?” To this, she responds with an equally pertinent question: “is a man small enough?” With a smaller stature, as women generally have, accessing hard-to-reach areas can in fact be easier – “particularly in domestic plumbing, having small hands can help”, Field reports.
Despite the benefits that women could bring to manual trades, sexist attitudes continue to frustrate current workers, and discourage potential ones. Anecdotal evidence points to scenarios ranging from clients assuming a trader’s male subordinate is actually her boss, to teasing and bullying on college courses. Even when women are not being overlooked or bullied because of their gender in these trades, the motivation behind their career choice is often questioned. Because women in manual trades remain a rarity, when they do pursue this kind of work others often view their decision as a feminist statement rather than simply dedication to the craft they love.
As economic necessity, and some gentle encouragement, allows more and more women to take up manual trades, these archaic attitudes will hopefully wither away. Holly Porter, who runs a networking group for female construction workers, emphasises our need to see more women occupying these roles: “unless people get more exposure to women in the industry things won’t change.”