September 2005

 

Twenty years ago women in hard-hats exclaimed “girls can do anything!” before the Saturday morning cartoons. In 2003, despite its name, the Modern Apprenticeship Scheme’s demographics were still mired in the 80s, with females taking only 6.6% and Pacific people 1.9% of the apprenticeship places. In 2004 the scheme’s Co-ordinators were expected by the Tertiary Education Commission to better target Pacific people, Māori and women, and the situation improved very slightly, with women’s figures rising to 7.8% and Pacific people to 2.3%. 

 

 

The Tertiary Education Commission is evaluating the scheme but says of the enhanced targeting efforts, “it is too early to say what their impact has been.” NEON visited South Auckland’s Otahuhu College for a first-hand look at young Pacific women’s perceptions about the job market.

 

Māori in MA Scheme         14%

Māori aged 16-21              20%

Pacific in MA Scheme       2.3%

Pacific aged 16-21            8.6%

 

 

Otahuhu girls with their eye on the workforce still thought of some manual trades as poorly paid “bum jobs”, despite the New Zealand skills-shortage driving up the premium on trades such as plumbing, electrical work, and auto-repair.   Still, girls were open to the idea of apprenticeships. Nearly all the year 12 and year 13 girls in a survey of two Transitions classes thought females were as well suited to apprenticeships as boys.

 

Many of the girls still had negative impressions towards skilled manual jobs. Plumbing in particular was seen as dirty, disgusting, unattractive, unskilled,and not a job for women. But the girls were surprisingly unanimous in their approval of the idea of female car mechanics. “That’s da bomb” they said, “if a girl’s a car mechanic she’s the hot[test].”

 

The girls were receptive towards skilled trades that go with an image that is sexy, glamorous, powerful, related to expensive consumer machinery, and which gain the respect of men. For example, one girl said of Jean Batten: “A woman flying a plane - that’s phat.*” Much of the time, they associated higher pay with these jobs, and were generally not aware that less ‘sexy’ trades were equally if not better paid. 

 

The opinions of the Otahuhu girls show the potential for marketing skilled trades and the Modern Apprenticeships scheme in a way that is more girl-friendly.   To increase female participation, the scheme has incorporated industries that are more traditionally ‘female’ – such as retail – but which still tend to be lower-paid and with less developed career paths than the traditionally ‘male’ skilled trades. But the EEO Commissioner Judy McGregor warns that this approach to gender-balancing the Modern Apprenticeship scheme reinforces stereotypes, and will continue to shut women out of high-skill, high-paid technical jobs, perpetuating occupational segregation. 

 

None of the girls spoken to had heard of the Modern Apprenticeship scheme. Careers Advisor Ian Dutton said that classes and careers interviews were not always successful in shifting students’ mindsets and stereotypes en masse, or hammering home accurate information about the incomes of different jobs. 

 

Also, none of the girls named their parents as the greatest influence on their career choice - but Dutton observed that the opposite was often the case when it came to the crunch. “A lot of parents …don’t want them to pick a job of their own free will.” On the whole, the girls revealed that their parents had more conservative attitudes about what jobs were appropriate for females and males. 

 

 

Pacific youth (people 24 and under) currently comprise nearly 10% of New Zealand youth, and that figure is only set to increase. Their 2.3% overall share of the Modern Apprenticeships intake should be setting alarm bells ringing.   Also, while Māori appear to be well-represented in the scheme, their 14% share is well below their 21.3% share of the overall youth population. 

 

If South Auckland schools are falling off the Modern Apprenticeship Co-ordinator map, this could be cutting out an entire demographic. Otahuhu College’s experiences with the Modern Apprenticeship scheme have been discouraging, with long lag-times for contact, and no student-outreach from the co-ordinators resulting in missed opportunities and disappointment. “Finally when our student went down for the interview she found out that someone had walked in off the street and got the apprenticeship,” said Careers Advisor Ian Dutton. 

 

Regular and personal outreach for interested students, is vital when working with Otahuhu students. Dutton suggests a major improvement would be “if we had a South Auckland co-ordinator, who visited all the South Auckland schools - probably every three weeks.” He sees the Gateway transition-to-work programme as a more successful model for Otahuhu, because of the presence of a direct contact-person for the programme at the school. “If our kids can get apprenticeships, that’s the way to go. We’re still going to promote it - I’m not going to be put off.” The new backing for apprenticeships is “a great opportunity for our students.”

  

The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) does not keep track of local information on co-ordinator outreach to schools, and concedes that more needs to be done to change attitudes of prospective students. But TEC spokespeople also emphasised the importance of “raising awareness amongst employers about the need for them to be more open to recruiting women into male-dominated industries… [and] linking more closely to large employers to encourage greater take-up of employment opportunities amongst Pacific peoples.”