A leading housing association is marking International Women’s Day with a celebration of the increase in females in its trade’s workforce over the past three months.
Last summer LiveWest launched its Women in Trades campaign in an effort to provide more opportunities for females to secure a trades career with the largest housing association in the South West. Less than a year ago 1.7% of LiveWest’s trade’s workforce was female but that figure has increased to 4%.
Liane Sheppard, Director of Property Services for LiveWest, is spearheading the Women in Trades campaign and has set ambitious targets for a continued rise in the number of females finding a route into trades.
LiveWest has just appointed 10 new apprentices to its trades’ workforce and five of those are women. The new wave of apprentices will start in April and will work across a number of trades. Its previous intake of new apprentices in January saw two women out of a total of five start a new apprenticeship as a multi-trade technician. The two intakes means that 27.27% of its trade apprentices are female which is a significant increase on the 7.14% a year ago.
LiveWest welcomes International Women’s Day which calls for a world free of bias, stereotypes and discriminiation. Liane Sheppard said: “International Women’s Day is a celebration of female equality, and we fully support it. LiveWest is an organisation which values and celebrates diversity and inclusivity.
“We all want to see a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination and organisations can play their part in that.
“We have some great female role models already working across our trades and our recent attempts to increase our female trades workforce has been warmly welcomed.
“It is obvious that trades are still male-dominated, but there is clearly a change in attitudes in society. We want to capture this shift and use it to promote our opportunities for women to forge a career in trades. For us, it is about empowering more women to pursue a trades career. The message is clear from LiveWest — you can achieve your career aspirations with us.
“Apprenticeships are not just for young people and because we pay the real Living Wage, we are attracting women considering a career change. We have just appointed a woman in her 40s as an apprentice electrician and she has been a chef most of her working life.
“LiveWest is committed to welcoming female colleagues to our trades and this could be the start of an exciting journey for those interested in launching or changing their careers.”
Orla Gorman is one of LiveWest’s new multi-trade apprentices after developing a passion for all things practical.
Bristol-based Orla said: “LiveWest are doing a great job at welcoming women into trades. I have seen quite a few women out on the job, and it is great to see women are being encouraged to get into trades.
“It was thought at one time that women can’t do some jobs, but people are now realising that they can. People are realising that women are strong and skilled enough to do the same job. It not just men who can lift heavy objects, saw a piece of wood or fix a radiator.
“It is nice to see it becoming more normal to have women doing trades jobs and actually some customers might like a woman arriving at their home to do a job.
“My advice to any female out there thinking of doing something similar is go ahead and do it.”
