Twenty-four female pupils from Queen’s High School, Taieri College and Otago Girls’ High School attended the event at the construction site of the new Dunedin hospital, where they were able to try their hand at building picnic benches and got to spend the day hearing from other women in the construction workforce.
Workforce Central spokesman Raymond Clark said the day was all about "giving the girls a feel for what it would mean to be a tradie some day".
"It was awesome for them to see women in hard hats and steel-capped boots, and loving every minute of it."
Mitre 10 sent over six employees, as well as a bird house for each pupil to build, and two sets of deconstructed picnic tables for the girls to assemble.
The picnic tables built by the pupils will be donated, and the girls will all get to take their self-built bird houses home.
Other organisers included staff from Ceres, who showed them around the site and what was going on in the hospital build, Te Pukenga, who provided all the information for how to enter a trade, and the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation.
"Girls are not well represented in construction," Mr Clark said.
"We should be encouraging women to want to come to construction, because it is such a huge talent pool, a great industry to be in, and we have such a shortage."
