Employment Pathways

The Women in Civil programme was born in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in
March 2020. At the time, the state government was ramping up ahead of delivery of its major infrastructure plan, including the flagship Metronet project. In the weeks after the state’s first lockdown, new data emerged outlining the ways in which the pandemic had more adversely affected women. For example, payroll jobs held by women fell by 6.5 per cent between March and June 2020, according to the federal government. In the months that followed, Connect Resources created the Women in Civil program: an intensive five-week course equipping women with the skills necessary to be operators, groundworkers and labourers, and satisfy a certificate three in civil construction.

Since the program’s launch in October last 2020, 40 women have been trained and 85 per cent of whom have been retained a full-time job. The program supplied more than 50,000 new hours of productivity for the civil construction industry and led to female trainees receiving more than $1.6 million in wages. The data is far less compelling than the stories of the program’s recent graduates, however. Women in Civil graduate Shelley Belcher left her job in retail last year Women in Civil drives opportunities Connect Resources is on a mission to lift female employment in civil construction, but it will require industry change.

Fellow graduate Kissane Taylor made the move to civil construction after more than a decade in hospitality and agricultural labour and said it had opened the door to new opportunities and is now a Trainer for Western Training.