Women tradespeople

[lizziecupcakes]

Hi there, sorry the title is badly worded but I am at a point where I have had a dozen poor experiences with tradespeople who are men.
Does anyone know where I can find women doing these jobs. I am certain they'd do a better job too!

Thank you

 

[Flyfisher]

Hmm. I suspect that men significantly outnumber women across all the usual building trades so your poor experience of male tradespersons is unlikely to be statistically significant. Nor is your apparent certainty that women will always do a better job than men.

I can see no absolutely no reason to divide men or women tradespeople by their sex, only by their competence and diligence. Neither of which, I believe, is a sex-linked characteristic.

Having said that, I did once see a transit van with signage advertising its business as "XYZ Ltd - Lady Painter & Decorator" so perhaps there is a market for women only trades?

 

[a twig]

My experience has generally been that trades are pretty hit and miss, out of the 50 odd different trades and contracts I have used on jobs over the years I can probably count on one hand the amount of them I have been 100% happy with and used for future work. That said plenty have been “good enough”.

There haven’t been consistent characteristics that crop up between those good and bad ones, I’ve had excellent work done by a sparky only just out of apprenticeship, and beautiful stone work done by a 62 year old mason, while equally suffering cowboy jobs from experienced and inexperienced general builders, plumbers, sparkies and even architects!

Not forgetting the most frustrating case of someone who used to be really good and then stopped giving a monkeys after 20 years on the tools but couldn’t afford to retire.

As such, I’d be very surprised if gender does turns out to be a reliable predictor of a good experience, a successful job usually comes down to recommendations from friends / local community, clear communication around expectations and patience to wait for that person to have availability rather than a rushed Google lottery because you want the job done in a couple of weeks.

 

[Zebra]

I was a female tradesperson for ten years, and never met another on a site. I think there are more now. I did use to advertise the fact, but wouldn't now. If I was working now I'd just advertise myself as Zebra Electrical, because if you advertise as a woman you only get small domestic jobs, nothing meaty that will make you any money. Also, I never got any work from builders, only direct from householders. I did do plenty of full house rewires, but they dried up during the recession. I went back to contracting because I couldn't make it pay enough, was chasing around for £40 here and £40 there. But then I'm also rubbish at the business side of things.

 

[montyjohn]

I can see no absolutely no reason to divide men or women tradespeople by their sex, only by their competence and diligence. Neither of which, I believe, is a sex-linked characteristic.

I think you are wrong here.
Well sort of.

Yes there's no reason why a man or woman can do a trade better then the other, however, once you factor in social norms, this goes out the window as you skew the results.

How many men tradies do their job because they fell into it and didn't know what else to do. Probably many. People that don't really have their heart in it.

Now take woman, for a woman to do that role she has said to hell with social norms, this is what I want to do and I'm dam well going to do it.

I'd put my money on the average woman tradie being better than the average male.