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.