Sascha?Wil­son

Women re­main gross­ly un­der-rep­re­sent­ed in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, says Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, Mar­lene Coudray. The min­is­ter ex­pressed this view yes­ter­day as she con­grat­u­lat­ed 190 grad­u­ates of Cy­cle 13 of the Non-Tra­di­tion­al?Skills Pro­gramme for Women at their grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the au­di­to­ri­um of the San Fer­nan­do City Hall yes­ter­day.

The min­is­ter, whose daugh­ter was mur­dered in Ja­maica two months ago, al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­peal to the women to re­port any in­stances of child abuse. "Please look out for them," she said. De­spite sig­nif­i­cant strides made by women in pro­fes­sions, she said, "Al­though we are gain­ing ground in many pro­fes­sions and tak­ing our right­ful places along­side our male coun­ter­parts, women are gross­ly un­der-rep­re­sent­ed in non-tra­di­tion­al fields and these in­cludes trades, tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al fields, as well as sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. It must be not­ed that these dis­ci­plines typ­i­cal­ly are af­ford­ed high­er renu­mer­a­tion pack­ages in the work­place."

She said the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) re­port for the pe­ri­od 1999 to 2000, which was when the non-tra­di­tion­al pro­gramme was ini­ti­at­ed, stat­ed that women com­prised few­er than three per cent of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. She said women now com­prised eight per cent of the sec­tor. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said, a Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies re­port in 2008 re­vealed of en­gi­neer­ing stu­dents on­ly 31 per cent were fe­male. Coudray said in the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor there was an ab­sence of fe­male chang­ing and dress­ing rooms.

"And trust me, these are not just in the job sites. In the of­fices women face that dai­ly-we have some good ex­am­ples to re­late to you." How­ev­er, the for­mer may­or of San?Fer­nan­do en­cour­aged women to con­tin­ue to be strong and re­silient. The women com­plet­ed the six-month pro­gramme in var­i­ous skills in­clud­ing plumb­ing, com­put­er re­pairs and ma­son­ry to a name a few, at a cost of $2 mil­lion, at ten cen­tres through­out the coun­try.

Ap­peal­ing for the pro­gramme nev­er to be stopped, vale­dic­to­ri­an Fran­cil­ia Rogers said the pro­gramme was chal­leng­ing, but worth it. "With­in this jour­ney, we over­came the fears of heights, heat, elec­tri­cal shocks and en­hanced self-con­fi­dence, while be­com­ing strong men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. As for our on the job ex­pe­ri­ence ses­sion, it was an eye-open­er to a man's world and how life is on the site for women in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try."

Al­so speak­ing at the func­tion where a sam­ple of grad­u­ates' work was on dis­play, were di­rec­tor of Gen­der Af­fairs Di­vi­sion Mon­i­ca Williams, project ex­e­cu­tion of­fi­cer Shel­ley-Ann Hart and per­ma­nent sec­re­tary San­dra Jones.