HUNDREDS of primary and secondary-school students from across the Mallee gathered at the Grain Shed in Swan Hill this week to explore career paths at a trades expo.
The Murray Mallee Local Learning and Employment Network Trades Career Expo on Wednesday had a strong focus on women in trades.
MMLLEN project officer Mikayla Zankar said students could see and take part in demonstrations of brick-laying, tiling, plastering and concreting among various activities provided by institutions from all over the state.
“The aim of the expo is to provide young people in our region with exposure to potential employers and information about career pathways and job services they can explore as adults across the trade sector,” Ms Zankar said.
“Industry is pretty excited about getting on board for these types of things and engaging with young people.”
Many stalls featured hands-on activities such as wood graining, and even virtual reality to give students an idea of what working in construction would be like.
The expo also placed a strong focus on women in trades and getting female students to consider them as a career.
Men make up about 98 per cent of the construction and infrastructure workforce and Sarah Curley, of Tradeswomen Australia, was among that 2 per cent for 10 years.
“I only came across one other woman in the decade I was in construction,” she said.
“Women make up 52 per cent of Australia’s population so only 2 to 3 per cent in trades doesn’t make sense to me.”
“From the kinds of stories that we’ve got, there’s a lot of girls that are pushed into what women should traditionally do instead of fully exploring all of their options.”
Ms Curley said being the only woman in the workplace could feel isolating.
“It’s not that I didn’t work with some nice people, but with every project that I’ve worked on, I had to prove myself to others every time that I was actually good at what I did,” Ms Curley said.
She said she went into construction after realising what she was doing at university was not for her.
“I wanted to do something a bit more hands on, so I ended up going into construction. But I did that after I finished university and accumulated a HECS debt,” Ms Curley said.
“So I just want to help girls at this age to start thinking about what they’re interested in and where their strengths are.
“It’s to just sort of draw them back and go, ‘Hang on, you’re really good at the hands-on stuff, how about going into this kind of profession?’ and just getting them to try and see if trades are for them.”
“But there’s a lot of work to be done in changing the environment in trades so that women feel safe and don’t face barriers to pursuing a career in trades.”
Food and drinks were also available, as students got to taste gourmet toasties by Tim Bone, a MasterChef semi-finalist, host of TV show Good Chef Bad Chef and founder of Tim’s Toasties in Ballarat.
