Polly Britten's Churchill win will see more women enter trades

After being awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship, Ms Britten will travel overseas to see how other countries attract more women into trades, and bringing their experiences back to Ballarat to encourage more women and girls to consider a career on the tools.

Ms Britten, who is Highlands LLEN school-employer engagement and structured workplace learning coordinator, has already helped many local girls and women see trades as a viable career through the popular NextGen Tradies - Try a Trade program over the past 18 months.

One in seven of the girls who have taken part, learning how to use tools and construction processes as they build a cubby house, have changed their course or career path at school, or started an apprenticeship after school in a trade career.

As a result, the building and construction courses at Federation TAFE, and the Platinum Institute in Delacombe, have both closed enrolments with more women signed up than men.

Ms Britten's Churchill Fellowship, one of 24 awarded across Victoria, will allow her to travel to Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy and the United States where the percentage of women in trades is much higher than Australia.

"The aim of the project is to identify learnings that can be implemented in Australia to improve minority representation in skilled trade careers from currently approximately two to three per cent toward levels achieved by the world's best countries," she said.

In Canada, 17 per cent of skilled tradespeople are women, in the UK it is 14 per cent, it is almost 11 per cent in the US and in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Denmark, nine per cent of tradies are women.

"This fellowship is an opportunity to learn what they are doing at an international level and bring that back and use it at a local level.

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"Things like how stereotypes and stigmas are addressed internationally, learning about what programs they run like our NextGen - Try a Trade program and how they do it ... right through to how they are running programs from a community level, is there more support for women going into trades, is there less unconscious bias and what it is that's actually getting these women to put their hands up."

On her study tour Ms Britten will visit tech schools, secondary schools, primary schools and vocational training organisations and attend a five day careers conference in Italy.

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