The gender warriors at Australia’s public broadcaster don’t get why so few women are interested in jobs in construction. Social engineering has successfully pushed women into many other previously male dominated jobs and professions but construction has proved a tough nut to crack. 

Some years ago the ABC published an article quoting academics who had done research into why this wasn’t happening. Their brilliant conclusion? A particular problem was a culture of “presenteeism”. Construction apparently isn’t keen on people who don’t show up! “There is little tolerance for those who won’t commit, and part-time, shared or flexible work doesn’t exist,” lamented the academics.

And, they said, the problem is made worse by the “push to complete projects on time”.

Late last year the ABC had another whine about the unreasonable demands of the construction industry – “long hours, early starts and rigid schedules” – and suggested putting “gender on the tender” — meaning that companies competing for government jobs must fulfil gender equity quotas.

Well, that’s already happening, particularly in Victoria which requires women to make up 3% of trade positions in government projects over $20 million and the ACT which demands 10% female employment for government projects over $5 million.

Four years ago the ACT government announced successful tenders for the build of a new school must have a 100% female management team on site. Given the dire problems of getting women into the construction trades, one solution has been to push women into management and admin. Currently females handle 17% of such roles in the construction industry.

But the most visible and controversial women in construction are of course, the traffic controllers. Those high-vis heroes of the roadworks universe, standing in the blazing sun or pouring rain, twirling their giant red-and-white lollipops – known in Australia as the Lollipop Ladies.

Recently a book on The Dark Legacy of Daniel Andrews included a chapter on workplace relations by John Lloyd, the first Australian Building and Construction Commissioner. His section on construction in the Melbourne Metro Tunnel revealed traffic controllers are paid $126,200 (£65,000) but explained that’s only the beginning. Night and weekend work attracts double time rates, plus numerous other work entitlements adding a further $540 every week to the cost of employing a single traffic controller.

According to Lloyd, it’s all thanks to the construction unions, particularly the notorious Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), now being “off the leash”. And that’s due to the Labour Government repaying the critical electoral support of the unions by abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), which kept them somewhat under control.

Everyone knows about the thuggery of these unions, with widespread allegations of systemic corruption, bribery and extortion on taxpayer funded construction sites. Everyone knows such issues have driven massive cost inflation and major delays in major infrastructure projects. A recent investigation estimated CFMEU misconduct cost Victorians at least $15 billion.

The result is every time we drive past a roadworks site and see a couple of lollipop ladies standing around chatting to each other or on their phones, it’s not just a bit of everyday irritation — it’s a billboard for how we’re all getting fleeced. These casual roles, often filled by young women earning exorbitant salaries thanks to union-mandated penalty rates and overstaffing rules, are the visible face of the CFMEU’s pernicious grip on construction.

‘They are the women we love to hate,’ headlined one of the many media stories ranting about their huge wages. ‘Lollipop lady sparks outrage after revealing how much she earns in a typical week – and the eye-watering amount she’s paid for a 15-minute shift,’ fumed the Daily Mail, discussing revelations from one traffic controller that she’d raked in $148 for just 15 minutes of work.

It’s not just the money. There are just too many of them. There are constant reports of overstaffing to meet union mandated minimums e.g. two to four controllers per site for shift rotations, even during quiet periods. Safety regulations require at least two controllers per high-risk site for safety, even if traffic is light. This is the result of over-prescriptive rules from road authorities and work, health and safety regulators, falling over each other to pile on demands.

Australia proudly leads the world in over-regulating road traffic control, mandated by the government entities such as VicRoads, Work Safe and councils. We boast roughly 40-60 traffic controllers per 100,000 people, roughly two to three times the rate in the United States, United Kingdom or New Zealand. Strict Austroads rules mandate human controllers on almost every moderate-to-high-risk site, often requiring six people or more per location.

The result? A very visible army of high-vis workers, many earning six-figure salaries with plenty of downtime. Yet there is no robust international evidence that this heavy-handed approach delivers fewer work-zone crashes or fatalities than countries that rely far more on signs, cones, portable lights, automated systems and common sense.

Well done, Australia — world champion in red tape, orange vests and cost over-runs, with safety outcomes that look pretty average.

But at the heart of this story is the great gender-diversity circus — DEI initiatives and shiny government quotas strutting their stuff, especially on taxpayer-funded projects. One major reason you suddenly see so many young women holding stop-slow bats is so the big contractors can tick the ‘we hit our female quota’ box and keep winning the next juicy government tender.

When it comes to ticking those boxes, it’s not the lollipop ladies who are making the difference. Women in traffic control make up roughly 1.5-3% of the total female construction workforce. It’s the female office workers and women in management who are really on the move – growing from 15% in 2023-4, to 50-55% in recent years.

The lollipop ladies don’t deserve to be the lightning rod for our frustration. They’re simply taking the well-paid jobs that a broken system has created. The real problem lies with the unions, the regulators and the politicians who designed this expensive, inefficient circus — and it’s long past time we stopped blaming the women holding the signs and started fixing the system that put them there.

As one of Australia’s first sex therapists, Bettina Arndt began her career discussing sex on television and training doctors and other professionals in sexual counselling at a time when such topics were largely taboo. Her current – and even more socially unacceptable – passion is exposing Australia’s unfair treatment of men through the relentless weaponisation of laws and policies that portray women solely as victims. Her decades of advocacy for fair treatment of men in the Family Court included serving on key government inquiries. Bettina makes YouTube videos and blogs on Substack.

Images are AI generated.