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EQUALITY IS EQUALITY An interview with Yvonne Pengilly Assistant Commissioner Technical, QBCC & NAWIC Member
As a child on a cattle and sheep property in Injune, Yvonne Pengilly didn’t do ‘girls’ work. It was just work, and everyone in her family did all the jobs that needed to be done, regardless of gender. “If dad was tinkering with the tractor, you were out there tinkering too,” she says. “You didn’t have someone else to do a job - you just did it.” Yvonne has spent about 33 years of her 40-plus-year construction industry career on work sites, but when she started in the 1980s, there were few women onsite. “Through the ‘80s I do not recall there being other females in onsite positions, other than in final cleans and administrative positions,” she says. After Year 12, Yvonne wasn’t sure what career path she would take. Later, when she married her first husband, who was in the building industry, she took on the roles that are especially important for a building business to succeed. “I did estimates, ordered materials, scheduled labour, managed payroll and office administration and I did labouring on weekends, even when I was pregnant in ‘83. “We think that there was a significant absence of women in the industry back then but there was a significant presence of women in family-owned businesses and they were influential on the industry. “They may not have been counted or measured but so many successful businesses were done while women balanced a home and children, and it was a role they did, not only because it was necessary but because they were invested in the industry.” Yvonne says that the late 1980s saw the arrival of women landscapers and women working as site clerks but that was usually at more progressive companies. In 1987, she took her first onsite job, as a business partner owning a subcontract business. When the need arose, she stepped into running the blockwork subcontract at a 15-storey high-rise development in Cairns. “That was probably the catalyst for me first being recognised. Business owners involved in trade contracting there recommended me to other significant builders as a result of my days on site and further work that I did.” 28
She later took an administration role in a consultant arrangement at another construction project office in Cairns. “I realised people wanted to employ me but I didn’t want to be locked into the exact hours I had to work. They recognised that I needed to have responsibility for my children, so I worked in the capacity of consultant rather than employee. “I dropped my kids at school, went to the office, then picked them up after school, brought them back to the office, did some more work and then took them home later. This arrangement served well throughout the years whilst balancing being a mother, wife and progressing my career. “In the late ‘80s and beginning of the ‘90s, I did a Certificate in Building Construction at TAFE and a CAD (computer-aided design and drafting) course because I wanted work in high-rise construction and I knew that you needed to understand the principles of design as well as building.” Next came an engineering degree, from 1994 to 1999. “I went to QUT with my results from TAFE and I said I ‘want to do engineering’. They suggested I consider architecture but I wanted to be a project manager and I figured that if I had engineering and my CAD, I was well on my way.” Yvonne completed her engineering degree. “And I realised I still had a lot to learn but I also understood a lot about construction.” It was in the ‘90s that things started to change in regards to increased women’s participation in the industry, she says. “During the ‘90s, I worked on a project that had female representatives as the architect, quantity surveyor and myself as the acting project manager. “There were some forward-looking companies that often had a female director who was a wife or a partner, who was recognised as an equal, not in the background.” While progress was occurring in workplaces generally, significant challenges remained for women, including harassment. “Sadly, I don’t believe that behaviour, and a lack of action against bad behaviour, has changed very much in the industry.
THE NAWIC JOURNAL
