(Montreal) In the end, 6,234 women were present on a construction site in Quebec during the year 2021, according to final data from the Commission de la construction du Québec.
Posted at 3:46 p.m.
This number of 6234 represents 1361 women more than the previous year. This is the “strongest gain ever achieved”, underlines the Commission in its statistical report on the presence of women in industry in 2021.
Preliminary data released by the Commission on March 8 reported 6,224 women, who represented 3.27% of the workforce in this industry.
In its program for access to equality, the Commission set itself the objective in 2015 of reaching 3% of women by 2018. The objective was finally achieved, but it took longer than expected. .
3,903 construction companies also hired women that year, compared to 3,311 in 2020. Both the companies and the trade union organizations and the Commission decided to get their hands dirty to convince more women to enter the industry and stay there.
Entry and exit in the industry
Also, in 2021, nearly 9% of entries into the construction industry were made by women.
This is “a record number of 1,933 women [qui] joined for the first time the construction industry subject to it” (to Act R-20 which regulates the industry). And this number means 670 more than in 2020, the Commission points out in its report.
They don’t always stay there. “Keeping women in the construction industry is more difficult than keeping men,” reports the CCQ. Thus, 53% of women who had entered as apprentices or in an occupation had left the industry after five years. Among men, the proportion of departures is 32%.
In industry, “graduates have, for both women and men, systematically lower dropout rates than non-graduates”, underlines the Construction Commission.
Women averaged 766 hours of work in the industry in 2021, compared to 1039 hours for men. This is 90 hours more than in 2020 for women.
By trades
The construction trades with the highest proportion of women are those of painter, carpenter-joiner and labourer. There are thus 1,522 women painters in construction, 1,168 carpenters and 1,122 labourers.
To a much lesser extent follow: 489 electricians, 361 plasterers and 252 tilers, 126 surveyors, 112 pipe fitters, 106 roofers and 105 tinsmiths.