Education & Work Any female tradies here?

Seriously thinking of retraining to become an electrician. I'm a bookkeeper so a complete change for me. Am I crazy?

 

Not crazy at all. I wish sometimes I had a trade. Good tradies always get work - and I bet your accounts would be more organised than most.

 

Thank you

I must add I am 37 years old! Is that too old? Any mature aged apprentices out there?

 

Problem is the low wages while you train. But you could supplement that with book keeping - perhaps for tradies.

 

Apprentices are cheaper than normal employees so someone would definitely make use of you to assist/ shadow until you cando your own jobs.

Sparky i regularly use via my PM agency here in adel is looking for someone if that helps any.

Age and gender only get in the way if you let them.

 

this reminds me off the episode of simpsons when marge becomes a handyman but makes homer the front that pretends to do all the work

If you dont think gender is a problem it shouldnt be a problem
Like I care who you are as long as u get the job done efficiently (cheap )

 

I gotta say I considered it too! But the apprentice wages were the no go for me.

So I applied for the Army Reserve instead.

My application is still in progress. I'll potentially be an Army Officer or Combat Engineer. Look that up.

 

Females make great tradies too, tend to have better focus on quality of work. Had a girl doing bricklaying/blocklaying during my apprenticeship. A little slower but her work was awesome and I believe she was an apprentice of the year nominee.

Go for it.

 

I'll second all of the above (plus give a few pointers)

Contact the Master Builders Association in WA, they have an apprenticeship scheme where they farm out the apprentices to various builders so that you're not left in the lurch when project comes to a grinding halt. (The alternative is NECA - the electrical association - Apprenticeships | NECA). They're looking for applications too.

With all of the infrastructure projects, there's bound to be ample work around.

Consider a mature age traineeship - trainee wages are slightly better than apprentice wage.

 

In my pre apprenticeship tafe course of about 75 people 3 were female. I would try the government/utilities for a apprenticeship, they seem more willing to hire mature aged apprentice and woman also. The money will suck but at least being a mature age apprentice will get you around $20 an hour, I was on $7.5.

 

I was very impressed with the full-female crew that turned up to wire my house build. Couple of young'uns who were more efficient, and no bs, compared to the all bloke plumbing crew

 

No - you just have to be able to survive on apprentice wages. Why an electrician?

 

Go for it if you can afford the temporary pay cut. My husband is a tradie, and his business we built together from scratch to the point where it now provides us both with full time work (I do all the quoting/organising and site visits) and it provides us with a very good income, and good work/life balance. We can have as much annual leave as we want (although unpaid!). The best part is that there is no income ceiling, you can grow the business as much as you want it just takes time and hard work. There is so much potential and the job security is the part I appreciate most

 

A fit 37 year old, male or female, is in with a chance but you are competing with 20 somethings but that's life. It's certainly not too old. I thought of doing the same years ago. I couldn't now, you're not crazy at all.

 

I can't imaigne the sexual Discrimination or sexism you'd face.

That being said I reckon you'd get much more work than a guy, at the people willing to give a girl a shot

 

Surely by age 37, the OP is a woman not a girl?

 

As someone who has tradies working for me, I would love to have a female as they come across more genuine to clients, they often will pay more attention to detail and they are not intimidating. So many of my clients tell me that its such a relief to have a female attend to quote them and I regularly hear how a lot of the male tradies they have had quote are quite aggressive and resort to scare tactics to try and get the job. A female tradie would be an asset to our business, however there are really not many female tradies in our industry at all. I have never come across one personally.

 

I had a client tell me a while ago that he had used a female carpenter, he said that she blew I'm away with her detail, and capability. He said she outdid all previous carpenters he had ever used in every aspect.

 

I'm technically not a tradie but spend ~50% of my time on the tools in our Handyman business. I love it but if I had a dollar for every time someone made a comment on a female doing a 'man's job' I wouldn't have to work. It's either in a positive way where they act like I'm curing cancer because it's such a wonder to behold to "geez, I thought a bloke would be turning up to do this" (but then my masculine sounding name might have something to do with it too as a lot of correspondence is done by text or email).

I reckon I get treated differently to my husband where they assume I don't know what I'm doing, question me or just watch me work and scrutinise everything. Usually once I prove I know what I'm doing or talking about (most of the time) then the respect is given whereas with my husband it's assumed he's competent straight off the bat and he doesn't have to earn that respect, it's already there. Also, I'm not sure if it's in my head or not, but I think my level of work gets judged a lot harsher too.

I've also had the odd inappropriate comment too but I just ignore that - it's usually said with me out of assumed earshot so I just ignore it.

Even rarer too is we've had a couple of jobs where my husband has spoken to the client and has asked or said that I will be doing the job suddenly they don't need the work done anymore... A lot of the time these days I do work for property managers where they assign a work order and don't care who does it as long as it's done and done well.

All in all though, I enjoy the work and find it really satisfying it just bugs me that I get treated differently whether it be in a positive or negative way. I can't recall one job where someone has been present and hasn't made a comment on me (a female) doing the work.

 

Wow thanks everyone for the vote of confidence

This according to my husband would be the main issue for me. Coming from a tradie background he has seen first hand how some women are treated.