Peggy Revell
High school girls from across Northwestern Ontario will have the chance to learn about careers in the trades at a dinner here Thursday evening.
Roughly 50 girls from Grade 9-12 are registered for the “Skills Work! for Women” networking dinner, coming from across the Rainy River District School Board, Keewatin-Patricia District School Board, and Kenora Catholic District School Board.
The dinner is one of many being held across the province as a way to connect these young women with those already involved with the trades to provide networking opportunities as well as encourage the next generation of women to pursue a career in the skilled trades or technologies.
“The young women have an opportunity to meet various mentors depending on who is volunteering in each community,” noted Carolyn Hartlen, director of Public Relations for Skills Canada-Ontario, the organization that first launched the dinners back in 2000.
Dinners also are being held in Port Elgin, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, Durham, Niagara, Sudbury, Kitchener, and Toronto.
“Roughly about 200 tradeswomen from across the province volunteer their time at a variety of these different dinners,” Hartlen noted. “And we also have a young women’s conference each May in the Kitchener-Waterloo region.”
For the Fort Frances dinner, there will be mentors from a variety of trades, noted Hartlen,
including a truck driver, construction contractor, chef, agricultural technician, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technician, and artisan who has a background in sculpting and welding.
While there are more than 150 occupations considered to be trades in Ontario, provincially and nationwide it is an area dominated by males.
According to Statistics Canada, 97 percent of those employed in the trades in Canada are male, compared to non-trade occupations where roughly half of those employed are male.
In 2006, women only accounted for 10 percent of all apprentices, which actually is double the number since 1992.
The numbers are a bit different in Ontario where, as of 2006, 17 percent of active apprentices were women and 20 percent of those registering in apprenticeship programs were women, according to Ontario Women’s Directorate.
