Research by Rated People identifies industry discrimination and huge gender pay gap
Research from Rated People suggests that up to a third of tradeswomen have experienced discrimination and that nearly 40% feel they aren’t taken seriously because of their gender.
With the construction sector facing a huge and growing skills shortage – in January 2022 there were 38,000 job vacancies in construction for the skilled workers – it is more important than ever tackle gender bias and get more women into the industry.
On International Women’s Day, Clive Holland, host of The Clive Holland Show caught up with Sandra Marichal, vice president, growth marketing from Rated People to discuss the company’s recent survey and what can be done to attract more women into the trades.
CIive Holland: Tell us about the research from Rate People?
Sandra Marichal: Every year we publish our Trends Report. [insert link: https://www.ratedpeople.com/blog/home-improvement-trends-report-2022-report]
It is 2022 and we need to talk about how the trade industry needs to be better at including women.
As you all know, there is a massive skills shortage in the trades and recruiting more people is important. There is a huge demand for tradespeople, there is a huge demand for home improvement, and we need more people and more women in the industry.
One of things that shocked us straight away… [is] across the twenty professions with the lowest representation of women in the UK, 11 of them are in the trades.
Carpenters, joiners, electricians, plumbers – none of them has more than 5% of women in the workforce.
Women only make up more of the workforce in one of those professions.
Guess which one?
Cleaning.
Holland: What is the lack of diversity down to?
Marichal: Like every other industry, the representation of women is an ongoing challenge. We all, whether you are a man or a woman, have a part to play.
When we look at the top reasons why there are not many women on site or in the industry three things that came up in our research.
One thing is a massive gender pay gap – we know that that exists across the world, but in the trade[s] women on average earn just 72% of what men do.
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For floor and wall tilers it is just 41%!
Another issue is related to the pool of talent. We need to make sure that we bring more women [into the trades ] from the early years.
We talked with a few [female] school leavers about what ‘options’ were presented to them, especially with regards to apprenticeships.
Already, at such a young age, there is a gender divide about their options. A lot of the women there said they were presented with ‘hairdressing’ and ‘beauty’ as trades for girls. And the boys got the cool trades.
Holland: Moving forward, what can we do?
Marichal: Our report has shown in 2021 nearly half of the UK residents made improvements to their home.
The demand for tradespeople almost increased by a third in the UK.
We [also] noticed that nearly half of homeowners that we surveyed said they wanted to hire a tradeswoman. (That is when we asked them the question).
We backed that up with [analysis] of Google searches and we realised there was growth of nearly 30,000 searches in the last 12 months, specifically for women painters, women builders.
So it is 2022, yes we still have to talk about it, but we see a lot of encouraging trends going in the right direction.
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