Red seal of approval

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This article was published 09/11/2023 (866 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Red River College Polytechnic hosted its first Jill of All Trades event — an aptly-named convention organized to encourage teenage girls to consider pursuing an apprenticeship and Red Seal certification — on Wednesday.

During the daylong event, grade 9-12 students listened to inspirational speeches from female instructors and participated in a series of hands-on workshops on the Notre Dame campus.

They learned how-to change car tires, build birdhouses, operate a welding simulator, program a robot, and wire-in a doorbell, among other skills.

“These events are really, really beneficial to get the word out and to allow them a chance to try (trades)… I’m happy to be that representation and link and show them that they can do it, too,” said Keren Gama, a Red Seal electrician and instructor at RRC Polytech.

Gama, who has a single female colleague, was always an outsider in her trades training courses.

She said she’s excited her employer is recruiting young women into electrical work and adjacent professions since she was never exposed to trades growing up. She only considered her current career as an adult, after a tradeswoman-friend recommended it.

The Nov. 8 field trip attracted about 90 girls from 10 different junior high and high schools, including Winnipeg’s Shaftesbury, Tec-Voc, Acadia, Fort Richmond, Arthur A. Leach, Henry G. Izatt, Maples, Garden City and Windsor Park campuses and St. Paul’s College in Elie.

“It’s very empowering, honestly — to see that other women also have the drive that I do,” said Grade 12 student Jordyn Sorenson.

Jordyn’s enrolled in a program that allows her to spend half a day at Garden City Collegiate and the other half studying electrical at the Manitoba Building Trades Institute — where she is the sole woman in her hands-on training class.

The 17-year-old said she’s always had a knack for mathematics and problem-solving, as well as a desire to work with her hands. And when a female electrician showed up to hard-wire her family’s hot tub a few years ago, she was inspired and immediately sold on pursuing the same path.

Maja Karlsson, 14, said she loves being independently able to build things with her hands. The Grade 9 student took a beginner woodworking course in middle school that changed her life.

“This summer, I was able to make my own bookshelves for my room. It felt great to know that I could do that myself,” she said, adding she is now torn between becoming a carpenter or marine biologist after graduation.

The stark gender imbalance in the workforce — under five per cent of apprentices and tradespeople in Canada identify as female — is a human rights issue, said Derek Kochenash, dean of skilled trades and technologies.

“First and foremost, it’s about human rights and it’s about having the right to be represented in anything that you do and be respected, and so that’s the underpinning (motivator): it’s the right thing to do,” he said, referring to ongoing efforts to recruit more girls into his school.

Kochenash noted employers are increasingly acknowledging the value a diverse employee group has on their businesses.

He said the newest initiative targeting high schoolers complements RRC Polytech summer camps and an annual conference created for younger students.

It’s important to expose girls to different careers early on because they start to eliminate options at a young age, the dean added.

Southwestern Ontario’s Conestoga College came up with the Jill of All Trades initiative. Since 2014, schools across the country have made it their own.

The Winnipeg Construction Association, Manitoba Women in Construction, and Toromont Industries, an industrial building construction company, all sponsored the local edition.

For Gama, it was heartening to see teenage girls build confidence after completing their workshop assignments — in her lab, functioning doorbell chimes.

“Attention to detail and pride in your work is really, really important when you’re putting in installations for electrical because if you don’t do that then it will backfire and problems will arise later on,” the tradeswoman said. “And it is a safety thing because we can create fires if we aren’t careful.”

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca