Status of Women Committee on March 24th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I think we have a quorum. We have some witnesses waiting, and we don't want to keep them waiting forever, so let's begin.

I would like to apologize for the lateness of our start today. There was a vote in the House, so most people have only just come.

I want to thank you for being on this video conference, and I want to let you know that because of Standing Order 108(2), this committee is doing a study on increasing the participation of women in non-traditional occupations.

We usually give you an opportunity to present for 10 minutes on your topic. This is followed by an interactive question and answer period. When we get to that point I will tell you how many minutes we have for questions and answers.

Ms. Turner and Ms. Clarke, will you be sharing your 10 minutes, or will one of you present for 10 minutes?

[Ashley Turner, Industry and Community Liaison, Women in Resource Development Corporation]

I will be presenting for 10 minutes, and Mary Clarke will be involved in the question and answer period as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We are ready to begin.

Our witnesses today include, from St. John's, Women in Resource Development Corporation. Ashley Turner will be presenting. Our second witness, from Vancouver, is the Canadian Construction Women. Rebecca McDiarmid, president, will present.

We will begin with Ms. Turner.

[Ashley Turner]

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in the session this afternoon. My colleague Mary Clarke is a community outreach coordinator with the educational resource branch of our organization, Women and Resource Development Corporation, also known as WRDC.

This afternoon I will be speaking to you about increasing the participation of women in non-traditional occupations. I'd like to begin by giving you an overview of our organization.

We are a not-for-profit organization, and our mandate is to advance the economic equality of women in Newfoundland and Labrador by promoting opportunities for equitable participation of women in trades and technology occupations in the natural resource industry.

I'd like to give you an overview of the labour market in Newfoundland and Labrador as it currently stands. We have forecasted skilled labour shortages that are projected to begin in the short term, with upcoming large-scale resource-based projects in our province. When these projects peak in approximately 2015, the demand for workers is expected to far exceed the supply of workers.

In our province, as well as on the national level, long-term skilled labour shortages are projected in relation to an aging workforce, particularly due to the anticipated retirement of the baby boomer generation, and decreasing birth rates. At the local level, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has identified supporting access for underrepresented groups such as women as a key strategy to counterbalance the expected skills gaps in our province.

Although women represent approximately 47% of our general workforce, they tend to be clustered in traditional occupations. In fact, approximately 36% of all employed women in our province are working in lower-paying traditional occupations such as secretarial work and sales and service occupations.

When you look at the non-traditional occupations, however, only approximately 2% of all employed women in our province are working in higher-paying non-traditional occupations such as the construction trades, transportation occupations, and heavy equipment occupations. In addition to this, they represent only approximately 3% of apprentices in non-traditional trades and 1% of journeymen in industrial trades. Therefore, women tend to be extremely underrepresented in non-traditional occupations within our province, as is the case at the national level.

Our organization has pinpointed several barriers as to why women are underrepresented in non-traditional occupations. Many of these barriers are similar to those that have been identified by other organizations as well. They include societal barriers, in that we receive messages every day about appropriate education and career options for men and women, and we use these messages to form biases and set inflexible standards about the suitability of men and women to perform certain types of work.

These biases become ingrained in our organizational policies, practices, and cultures, and they are reflected in recruitment, hiring, and promotion procedures. Overall, these societal and systemic barriers reflect gender perceptions that prevent the consideration of trades and technology as career options for women, since women's ability to perform this type of work is often underestimated.

This limits women's access to training and career opportunities, in that there is a lack of information and encouragement provided to them to pursue non-traditional occupations. They also have a lack of female role models in non-traditional fields, thus making it difficult for them to picture themselves in this type of work.

WRDC has identified these barriers. In moving forward to break them down, we first consider that women often “self-de-select” from trades and technology training programs and occupations. By “self-de-select”, we mean to choose for themselves neither to enter nor remain in these non-traditional occupations.

As an organization, we feel it is extremely important that general recruiting and retention practices be improved to attract women. Overall, the system needs to adapt to accommodate women, from a recruitment and retention standpoint. More focused recruitment and retention policies and programs are needed in order to increase women's participation in non-traditional occupations. In order to do this, however, we need collaboration on the part of all key stakeholders. This includes post-secondary institutions, government at all levels, labour, industry, and community organizations such as ours.

Our government in Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as the federal government, has recognized the importance of having gender equity requirements in relation to large-scale projects in order to increase the participation of women on these projects. In relation to our offshore oil and gas industry, the Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, under subsection 45(4), states that the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, CNLOPB:

...may require that any Canada-Newfoundland benefits plan include provisions to ensure that disadvantaged individuals or groups have access to training and employment opportunities....

Our local government, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, also states in section 6 of the Newfoundland and Labrador energy plan that government will:

Require large-scale energy project proponents within our jurisdiction to include employment plans for women that address employment equity and work with other governments to accomplish the same goal where resources are jointly managed.

Overall, what we do as an organization is attempt through our various services and programs to aid key stakeholders, including government, in meeting gender equity requirements and goals. We offer gender-based analysis and planning in relation to the sharing of best practices as well as policy and program development. We also offer support to industry in developing and implementing gender equity plans. As well, we offer sessions on gender awareness in the workplace to industry and post-secondary institutions, in order to alleviate many of the barriers I have identified for you within these workplaces and institutions.

Another service we offer is employment and career services to women who are considering entering non-traditional occupations. We also offer a variety of hands-on training programs, which we feel are very important in allowing women to explore trades and technology occupations, which are of course non-traditional fields for women. We offer these programs as career considerations to both women and young girls. One is the orientation to trades and technology program. We partner with College of the North Atlantic on this program to deliver it to women 19 and over within our province.

Another four programs are clustered beneath the educational resource centre branch of our organization. These are techsploration, Girls Exploring Trades and Technology, Camp Group Learning for Outgoing Women, and a new program still in the curriculum development stage, Girls in Renewable Energy and Alternative Technologies. These four programs offer hands-on training to both girls and women in non-traditional fields.

In conclusion, WRDC feels that the forecasted skilled labour shortage in our province is an opportunity to move forward in new directions and in breaking down many of the barriers identified for you today. We feel that collaboration between stakeholders is key, including collaboration between organizations such as ours and government at all levels. Let's move forward together to secure the future by breaking down the barriers and offering equal opportunities to the women of our province and our country, including our daughters, our nieces, and our granddaughters.

Thank you again for the opportunity to present my speech.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Turner.

Now, Ms. McDiarmid, would you begin, please, for 10 minutes.

[Rebecca McDiarmid, President, Canadian Construction Women]

My name is Rebecca McDiarmid. I'm here representing the Canadian Construction Women. The Canadian Construction Women is an organization dedicated to supporting women in or wishing to become part of the construction industry, particularly in the Lower Mainland.

I believe there are benefits both to women and to the industry by increasing the number of women in construction. Unfortunately there are also a number of barriers preventing more women from entering this field. Specific reasons why more women should join construction include lucrative wages, particularly when compared to more traditional fields; opportunities for advancement based on skill—in construction I've found that the cream certainly rises to the top; long-term employment security; university education is not necessarily required; and people working in construction will always have that satisfaction of producing a product that's going to be there and evident for decades to come.

Benefits to the industry include women bringing a different set of strengths to the job site. We tend to be more detail oriented, better at multi-tasking, and gentler with equipment. This has real cash advantages for businesses when it comes to maintenance costs and replacement costs, particularly in heavy equipment.

There's anecdotal evidence that there are fewer confrontations on site, fewer incidences of fighting, that people seem to be more productive, looking towards resolution-based problem solving as opposed to trying to win. Women tend to have a better safety ethic. A woman is more likely to ask for help when trying to move something heavy, which translates into the men also feeling that they are not obligated to try to push themselves to the limit. Obviously the fewer injuries you have on any site, the better off everybody is.

Increasing the number of women in an organization will broaden the perspective when it does come to problem solving, just in the different ways that men and women think. They are able to come up with better solutions to deal with their problem. Also, by being more open to having women in the organization, companies are able to broaden the talent pool they're drawing their employees from.

Unfortunately there are some barriers to increasing the number of women in construction. There's a lack of information about available opportunities. Most high school girls are not presented with construction being a viable career option. There are misconceptions about the industry by individual women, their parents, and their teachers that it's man's work, that it's always dirty, it's always heavy, and it's too technical. That is certainly not the case. A lot of teachers and career counsellors will focus on the importance of attending university as opposed to presenting the options of apprenticeship training or trades training or technical school as an alternative to university after high school.

Employers don't always recognize the benefits of having women in their organization. This is a matter of a lack of experience with women who are able to help them out. Other barriers include job site hours. It can be difficult to arrange for child care with the hours of construction sites in general. We tend to start earlier: 7:30 in the morning to 4 o'clock in the afternoon is standard for us, and it's tricky to find child care that's going to accommodate those hours. In addition, when you have a woman working on a site, the only woman there with 60 other guys, you do get the sense that you're alone, and that can be hard on a lot of women who aren't prepared for that.

To overcome these barriers, the best way of doing that is to provide positive role models, women who have made successes of themselves, showing the next generation that it is possible. They can do it. It's going to take a lot of work, but they can be successful.

Educating the public about opportunities available in construction: it is a good paying job. It's possible to advance and advance quickly, particularly in comparison to other, more traditional careers.

Educating employers about the benefits of increasing the number of women on their site: again, this is mostly anecdotal information from employers who got their first woman on site and were amazed at the difference it made in their crews or their maintenance costs or the productivity of the work in general.

There are also supporting organizations to provide a venue for women to get together who don't have the opportunity to interact with a lot of other women during the course of the day, to compare notes and exchange stories and find some inspiration to get through the harder times.

One of the things I would like to bring up, which has been discussed in previous conversations on introducing quotas, mandates, or initiatives that specifically target women and increase the number of women in non-traditional fields, is that it can create a backlash when everyone is not judged by the same criteria. Even women who are well qualified and who are doing a good job are judged against this standard. This has been seen before. Law enforcement agencies and the military have tried to increase the number of female members. You can end up with nicknames such as the “powder puff patrol” or the “pink list”, which refers to women who are working on site. It creates nothing but antagonism between the women and their male counterparts.

In summary, I'd like to say that both women and the construction industry would profit by increasing the number of women in the field. Current barriers to increasing the number of women employed in building trades and on-site management can be removed through education and through increasing the profile of positive role models. Having said that, programs put in place to merely increase the number of women on construction sites would not be productive and would create a hostile environment for other women who are going to be entering that field.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. McDiarmid.

We're now going to begin our first round of questions and answers. It's a seven-minute round. For the benefit of the witnesses, the seven minutes include questions and answers. If both the questioner and the responder can be as crisp as possible, we can have many more questions than we would normally have.

I will begin with Ms. Simson.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, ladies, for taking time out of your busy days to agree to be witnesses and to help us with our study.

I'll pose my questions to the three of you, but one of you could answer. For the two organizations, I want to compare your responses.

My first question to all of you is this. We know that gender stereotyping has been and remains a big issue. Parents and educators still steer young girls in a certain direction towards traditional types of careers. Because of the global economy, the workplace is being shaped and reshaped through the impact of cultural differences, for instance. Different cultures have different ideas to ours on what is traditional and non-traditional. What's your sense of the impact that's going to have on any success we've achieved thus far in Canada in attracting women who come from homes where their culture is entirely different, for instance, to non-traditional occupations?

[Ashley Turner]

I can begin. I'm Ashley Turner from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you for your question. I think it's a very valid and a very important question when considering an increase in women's participation in general in these fields. I certainly understand where you're coming from. As you said, traditional and non-traditional occupations vary from culture to culture.

I mentioned some of the traditional occupations for women in our North American society, which are, again, types of secretarial work. Oftentimes child care and caregiving activities are considered traditional for women. Non-traditional work would be the construction trades, to which we've both referred. These may not be possibilities or considerations for women in other cultures. They may not have been encouraged to enter into non-traditional occupations on an even deeper level than perhaps we have in North American society.

On moving forward with policies or programs to actually attempt to increase the participation of women in general in these occupations, we need to take cultural considerations into account when developing our policies and programs. We need to apply them to cultures other than our North American society and other than the culture we've referred to in our presentation in order to ensure the programs are effective and no one is left out in terms of other cultures and other groups of individuals.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you.

[Rebecca McDiarmid]

Might I respond to that? I have been working in construction management for over 10 years and have regularly dealt with people from other cultures. Some of them are more conservative than those in the North American one.

The guys I've dealt with are much more interested in knowing you can do your job than in knowing you're a woman. The best way of overcoming any barriers from other cultures is to demonstrate competence.

As far as getting more women from other diverse cultures involved in non-traditional roles in Canada goes, again I think role models will play a key role. When they see other women leading successful careers and making financial successes of their lives, they will certainly consider construction or other non-traditional roles as being viable options for them.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Specifically with respect to the trades, do your organizations have a lot of interaction? Do you strategize on a regular basis and maybe try to have some mechanism to gauge results with respect to working with trade unions? For instance, here in Ontario the carpenters' union developed a specific recruiting and training program that's geared specifically to attracting women to the carpentry trade, which has had some degree of success.

Is that something that you pursue with the trades in your regions?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Turner, go right ahead.

[Ashley Turner]

Thank you very much.

As I mentioned, as an organization we certainly attempt to work with all key stakeholders. Unions are certainly key in attempting to have women move into non-traditional trades. As we know, union lists tend to be used in the hiring process to get any workers into trades occupations.

We have started working with unions directly in our province. Many unions, locally, have started to recognize the importance of increasing the participation of women in these fields as well, and they have begun their own initiatives, which we do hope to collaborate on with them, in order to increase the number of women in their union and within trades in general.

One of these initiatives, for example, involves having a database of women who are first-year apprentices and matching them with employers to ensure that they are able to log hours towards their next level of apprenticeship. That is just one example of what a local union is doing and one example of what we hope to collaborate on with them.

[Rebecca McDiarmid]

The Canadian Construction Women Association does not currently work with trade unions directly, as far as trying to track the success of any initiatives they may or may not have geared towards women.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Now we'll go to the second round.

Monsieur Desnoyers.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome.

My first question is for Ms. McDiarmid and it is related to the construction sector.

Several of the people here today told us that it has not been easy for women, even today, to enter non-traditional occupations, whether because of day care problems or because of equity or equality in the workplace. We have major projects that need many construction workers, in Newfoundland, Alberta, and British Columbia, where the Olympic Games took place just recently.

Ultimately, what have you done to make these places and jobs more accessible to women whose situation in construction has not made much progress for a number of years? We know that the construction sector is not an easy environment. Supposedly, men yell, and so on. The women have to deal with that. There is also the issue of harassment. Could you comment on that topic?

[Rebecca McDiarmid]

Are you asking about Canadian Construction Women specifically or the industry in general?

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Could you tell me what your association is doing to make things easier? I imagine you are working as an organization.

[Rebecca McDiarmid]

Canadian Construction Women provides a venue for women who work in all aspects of the construction field to get together and support each other in our roles. We provide excellent role models of women who run the gamut from lift operators to vice-presidents and from lawyers to surveyors. They can come together, exchange experiences, and realize that they're not alone. They can demonstrate to each other that we can be successful in construction.

In addition to that, we go to schools and trade schools to talk to students about our experiences in construction—the good parts, the bad parts, and the parts in between—particularly to give high school students an idea of what it's like and what they can expect when they join the construction industry.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Earlier, you talked about special health and safety accommodation in the workplace. I think that is a good example. We organize workplaces to make them more accessible not only to women, but also to men. In the past, we did not have the necessary tools, but with women coming into those places, they became a lot safer.

Ms. McDiarmid, are the laws reasonable in that regard?

[Rebecca McDiarmid]

Yes, I think this is the way to proceed. I was on a construction site several years ago where there was an incredible number of women on the tools, and placing rebar, and working as electricians, plumbers, and drywallers. I was there on site as the project manager. There was a different tone to the site. Everybody was working together. I'm not going to say that it was a Pollyanna kind of situation, because we're still working in construction, after all, but the more women there were on site, the more comfortable we all felt. It was a really good working environment for me.

I know that pushing safety in construction is a good thing, generally speaking, and if having more women on site will make things safer for everybody, that's a good thing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one and a half minutes.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I would like to look at the issue from another angle.

In the west, there are a lot of major gas and mining projects, just like in Newfoundland. And we said earlier that there was a shortage of staff and we were encouraging women to go into these areas. I would like to know how this is being done. For example, are women being accommodated? Some are probably married or single mothers. How do we make these areas easier for them?

[Rebecca McDiarmid]

On at least one major oil and gas project in the west, I've heard of a child care facility being provided on site, or close to the site, to allow women who are heavy equipment operators to drop their kids off before work and then pick them up after work without having to drive three hours out of the way.

The report I heard was that it is a very successful program, so successful, in fact, that this site ended up teaching grades one, two, and three as part of their facility. The costs of the child care were offset by the savings the company saw in their maintenance and equipment replacement costs.