Alexis: 0:00

Hello. Hello everybody and welcome to the Smoke Row Podcast. My name is Alexis Armstrong, your host, nice to meet you. The Smoke Row Podcast is the place to celebrate and highlight women, trans women, and non-binary folk working within STEM and trade occupations. So please tune in, take a break, join us. We are on SMO Row and we are extremely lucky today to be joined by the lovely Lisa Weatherby, who is the Dean of Academic Services at st. Which is the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Her previous leadership roles. Within st. We're at the School of Transportation, the School of Construction, and most recently the Dean of the McPhail School of Energy. She is a state alumna herself, graduating from the Avionics Technology Program. After the Avionics technology program, she went and got her private pilot's license, her Masters of Education from the University of Calgary, and she is currently completing a doctorate in higher Education administration from the University of Liverpool, in which she focuses her research on inclusivity classrooms in male dominated apprenticeship programs. It is so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming onto the show. Thanks Alexis.

Lisa: 1:10

Really happy to be here. Excited to, to share some of my experience and, some of the research I've been doing. I've become very passionate about it.

Alexis: 1:19

I'm excited to learn more about your research. Before we get into your research, I was wondering if we could go back to the very beginning. And if you could talk to how you first became interested in aviation, and then how that interest led to a career in avionics, getting your pilot's license and now acting as Dean of Academic Services at st.

Lisa: 1:40

The way you say it, it sounds like a really quick thing, but it's, we're talking about 25 years, since that first started. It really started, I was on my own. I was a single parent. I became a single parent when I was 28 years old, my children were three and four years old and I asked myself one night, what I would do if I could do anything I wanted to. And it wouldn't matter the work, it would take, the money it would take. If it all landed in my lap tomorrow, what would I do? And I just saw the cockpit of an airplane and I thought, I wanna fly. I'm gonna get my commercial pilot license. My dad was a private pilot and when I was about 12 or 13, he let me fly it. That always stuck with me. A few years later, my older brother got his private pilot license and I remember. Crying when he first, so when he did his first solo, because I was so jealous. When I'm not jealous of something, it really, that's just my gut telling me how badly I want it, right? So now that I have, was on my own and had, the whole world in front of me and I could start to make those choices for myself. So I was, at the time I was working as a waitress, I started using my tips to pay for ground school. So ground school was like$600 for the whole thing. Or you could pay$30 every night that you showed up. And I would just use my tips and pay the$30 every night that I showed up. And I got myself through ground school and then Wow. Scraped the money together to start flying. And then, I thought, if I took this avionics program at St, I could know more about the airplane than the other pilots. And more about the systems. So I decided to go to St. Oh my goodness. And then, I got a job in avionics right after graduation. And kind of surprisingly, I also got my first contract to teach a course at SAT the following year. I graduated in 2000 and I got my first teaching contract in 2001. Wow. And I continued to teach at, sat on contract at the same time I was working in industry, and earning my, aircraft maintenance engineer license. So really aviation is what sparked. My path in education. It's like I started there, I started at SAT as a student and really never left. I was in aviation in the industry long enough, to get the credentials I needed to become a full-time instructor at sat. Some of the best things in life are the things you don't expect and they happen. I was never exposed to being an educator until Until that time. It sounds really cheesy, but going from being a single mom waiting tables in a breakfast restaurant to fixing airplanes less than two years later, that was a big leap. And it, oh my goodness. Yes. It made me very passionate about the power of education to change people's lives. That's what really sparked my passion for education was that, my own experience in that. Dean of Academic Services, where I am now it really supports that passion as well. And that's why I had chosen to make a lateral move to academic services from Energy because academic services is about those supporting programs who have academic, upgrading open studies, English language foundations. So we're supporting people making that leap. People who never thought that post-secondary education was possible for them to be able to make that big leap and have a new life and a new career.

Alexis: 4:51

I never expected that to be the answer like that. That's insane. I know you were like, oh, this is really cheesy, that it might have changed my life, but that was gonna be my comment, is how crazy that story is because it went from zero to a hundred. It completely did change your life. And like you are the testament of how powerful and education can be and how much impact it can have on your life without you maybe even realizing like what possibilities it just opened or what doors it just opened. I didn't realize that was like a quick transition that you were working both within avionics and as an educator and also as a mom. I don't really know how you did all of that, and I'm sure, I don't know if you look back at that and you're like, how did that happen?

Lisa: 5:32

I don't know, either. People ask me. People ask me, and I say 15 minutes at a time, if there's something that had to be done, you had to find a 15 minute window to do it. And if it was something that would take two hours, it might take all week at 15 minutes at a shot to get it done so that you could do it. But if you waited for two hours, it wasn't gonna happen.

Alexis: 5:51

It's like the epitome of time management that's like a course in itself that you should

Lisa: 5:56

teach. It's unsustainable though out Alexis. Like it's, yeah, it's a tough, it was tough, but a few tears in the kitchen, but we came out.

Alexis: 6:05

I could imagine how tough it is and I don't wanna downplay that because I Couldn't see it not being sustainable for a couple years of just going for it. But that's so amazing that you did that transition and kind of got to where you are now. Your story, it's so powerful that you're in academic services cuz you're representing people like you that have had that lived experience and that like transformative power of education. My next question was really how surreal does it feel to go from being alumni to a dean, but you never left sat, so I don't really know if that's really applicable. No. But I was wondering if you could maybe speak to your experience within the different programs, and maybe you've already touched on this, a little bit of the school of, transportation, school of Construction, school of Energy, and now the Dean of Academic Services.

Lisa: 6:50

I started in transportation obviously because my background was aviation, and as I mentioned, I actually started teaching and I taught for eight years full-time. You come from industry and after you're teaching for about three or four years, it's almost like you hit a crossroads, right? And you need to decide am I gonna be an educator? Or if I'm gonna be an aircraft maintenance engineer, I need to get back into industry because I'm gonna become, I irrelevant in that day-to-day, what's happening on the airplanes all the time, we teach very fundamental things that say in order for people to start their journey and. I decided that I was gonna be an educator, when I hit that tipping point. And I, knew I needed additional credentials in order to be able to move forward. So I did a provincial instructor diploma from Vancouver Community College, and then I did a master's degree in education from the University of Calgary. At that time my ultimate goal was to be a dean at sat. I really enjoyed teaching and my interaction with students. But at the same time, I wasn't the kind of person who wanted to know what every Thursday at 9:00 AM was gonna bring me. Right? Yeah. Because, you have this schedule and it goes for four months, then you get a new schedule. For three or four years I taught digital electronics every Thursday morning. Some people love that structure and they'll do it for 20 years, but I am not that kind of a person. And so I started to get a little itchy. After I finished the masters, I became academic chair for the aviation programs at St. I graduated. June 6th, 2012 from the U F C. And on June 7th they posted the academic chair role. So it just felt like a sign. Just felt like a sign. Yeah. I was made to be. Yeah. Had to go for it. And then, so I did that for a couple years, learned how to be a manager and a leader, and, supported students. Again, that's my favorite part is really the students. I, started the doctorate about two and a half years after I became a chair. And the doctorate. I don't think I needed it to be a dean. Obviously. I've been a dean now for five years. I think it was about the fact that I had the potential and it was something. That was doable. Like I could actually do this. I was the only person in my family to finish high school. It's, having that educational journey was, I think just as important as the professional one. So I was in the doctorate for only a. Gosh, probably six or eight months. I had just started it. And usually you have a new role, takes capacity, or you're doing an educational piece that takes capacity. And then my supervisor pointed out an associate dean position in school of construction and I was qualified and so I applied, but now I was doing a new role and. Also doing the doctorate. So the capacity piece, yeah. Became a bit of a challenge, right? That juggle, you only have one Saturday morning and not two. And usually you're either learning a new role or maybe taking a course. I was trying to do both. And then I, after two years I went, I made a lateral move to associate Dean in energy. And then a year after that became the dean in energy. So four roles from the time I started the doctorate to the time I finished. And it took me Wow. A very long time, because of that, right? You can have everything you want, but you can't have it all at once. It's just really nice to finally finish and have the doctorate and have that dean role firmly under my belt and, can move forward to really enjoy life. That's amazing. Not that I haven't been enjoying

Alexis: 10:11

it. No, but it's just, it's a little bit different, but it's, life's gonna look a little bit more constrained when you're doing all of that. That's a lot of things to do all at once. That's amazing and congratulations of completing. Thanks.

Lisa: 10:22

But I don't know, I guess you just have to be tenacious enough and sometimes you just get past to a certain point where you just can't, it's pretty hard to quit after everything that you've already invested.

Alexis: 10:35

To keep going,.

Lisa: 10:35

I had to always tell myself, I've had these different roles, I've had all this change. We went through Covid and all of this. Different family things that happen. And so you have to be kind to yourself, I think. When I talked to, people that work with me and people that I support at St. I encourage them to do new things, to do that master's degree or take that new role. But we also always, need to be kind to ourselves and remember that, law often we're gonna be harder on ourselves than other people are gonna be.

Alexis: 11:04

I wanted to touch on a couple things that you mentioned in that answer, and one of them really was your role as Dean and saying that teaching your students and seeing them Become who they are is what you love the most about being Dean. But you also mentioned too that you wanted to become a dean because you didn't like the minutia having every single day scheduled. And so my next one is what is a typical day? But it sounds like you have no typical days as Dean, and I was wondering if you could walk through the roles and responsibilities that you have currently as dean

Lisa: 11:34

In my current role, I think, the thing I miss the most is the interaction with students. I wanted to be a dean because I don't like, I don't see students as much, like most things are handled at other levels before it gets to me. It's gotta be something either really, really good or really, really bad. Before, before it actually, hits my desk nowadays. But I have the opportunity to impact them on a completely different level or influence their experience on a completely different level. Changing policy and process and support, supporting strategy in order to, make teaching and learning the best that it can be. ATS and I work with, different stakeholders. I'm on committees, I chair committees, we work through some of the things that, that hang students up or maybe some of the things that we can do better are differently. A lot of the conversations we're having now post covid is, what is that modality of delivery that, that really, that students want and is really gonna support them? And how do we support our faculty in doing that? How do you. Institutionalize that, right? You're making the entire department and working with other deans to make the entire institution a better place for both our faculty and our students. To support teaching and learning. More strategic. I have an associate dean that, I joke that does all the work, right? So he operationally, manages the department. I support that when, whenever folks need me and provide more strategic leadership to the team. I don't wanna say my typical day is to answer all the emails that come in the box, but you have those days. And then. That's followed by days where you make some really positive change, to support people.

Alexis: 13:14

No, that's amazing. It's higher level support or institutional support in creating that kind of structure to make a long lasting impact. You are gonna have a bigger impact and affect more students' lives and their quality of education, what does that look like? What does, how are they supported? How are they being educated? That modality like you spoke of, I think that's pretty powerful.

Lisa: 13:36

Yeah, I definitely don't know what I'm doing every Thursday morning.

Alexis: 13:40

Yeah, your wish was answered. Lisa, I was wondering if you could speak to maybe education or your time as an educator of your favorite thing working in higher education. What is that? Is it maybe seeing a student grow? Is it teaching a specific thing? What is your favorite aspect of higher education? I

Lisa: 13:58

think removing barriers, right? So I talked about people and supporting them, making that big leap, and really understanding how the potential impact to their lives that we can all have, as students come to us for an educational journey. And I think removing those barriers, When sometimes it's a specific student, that I have to help, and sometimes as a dean I, it's easier for me to remove a larger barrier, right? Because I have a little bit more influence than maybe an instructor does, and I can and inform policy and all of those things. But those are my favorite days when I really sit down with someone and help them with a problem. I love to solve problems at, my favorite thing when I was working on airplanes was troubleshooting. It was the thing I was the most afraid to do. And then imagine it became, the thing I love the most was troubleshooting. And so I love to solve problems. And I've learned in my leadership that not all the people who work for me want me to solve their problems for them. I learned to also step back and support people in their learning and help them solve their own problems as well.

Alexis: 15:02

I love that answer of removing barriers, because I think that speaks to your research and that speaks to what you're interested in right now of how do you change in infrastructure and institutional kind of barriers to education or what does that quality of education look like? I think that's a very beautiful kind of, Idea and mindset about education. If we could go into your research a little bit more, because that's the whole subject of it is looking at these inclusive classrooms and male dominated apprenticeship program, could you speak to your research, what it entails? Maybe give people a baseline understanding of what is the status currently of these classrooms? And then, What practices can we put in place to increase baseline and to bring up diversity?

Lisa: 15:48

it's a big question. I just completed, an ed d so an educational doctorate. And it's very specific to education, more of practice based versus a theoretical approach to things. So the goal of my research is to inform my practice as a professional. Oh, amazing. I started the research, when I was, dean in the School of Energy and I wanted to inform my practice with regard to in inclusivity and male dominated apprenticeship classrooms in aviation. I worked in male dominated spaces and actually even when I came to state, when I first became an instructor, we opened a facility at the airport to support aviation programming, and I was the only female that worked there. Oh wow. So I was very familiar with those spaces as well. I have been supporting a mentorship program with our women in trades and technology group at State. And just talking to some of the mentors and some of the reasons that they wanted to give back. They talked about some of the things they experienced, both in industry and as well as in the classroom. And so that's why they wanted to help mentor other students at sat, was to give them some support and That became my research problem. So are our classrooms actually inclusive? And if they're not, then what do we do about that? There's been a lot of work in women in trades in research that informs the problem. But, the solution's been quite evasive and I haven't been able to really find a lot of empirical studies that take solutions and action different solutions and see what happens. Most of the research on women in trades is really identifying the problem. So I did a qualitative study, that interviewed, female students in male dominated apprenticeship classrooms, and I also had them provide a background statement. That informed their path to their apprenticeship program. So what brought you here? Why did you decide to become an apprentice? What things in life did you love before you came? Things like that. And interestingly, all the participants, but one. Identified that they had a background that included male dominated spaces. And they also identified as tomboys, during their interviews, they also confirmed that background helped them to feel more confident in that classroom space. So you can imagine if a student didn't have that background, that classroom space becomes very different. So it would be really interesting to research, like if I was to extend this research to study people who have left. Yeah. And think about why? When you have just about all your participants that identify as coming from a male dominated background and that helped them build confidence and they know how to fit in and they have the thick skin and all of those things, then, they actually see it as quite inclusive because it's very normalizing. Like it's normalized for them. It's already skew data, right? A little bit, right? So they, really would describe the classroom as being inclusive, but then they would also talk about. The fact that they dress differently to come to school so that they would manage people's perceptions about women trades. They spoke differently. They learned how to fit. Like they would say that the classroom was inclusive, but then they would also tell me about all these things that they were doing to fit in. And so we have to ask ourselves whether these environments are actually becoming more inclusive or if. We're not really moving the needle on women in trades because we have the same number of women who know how to cope in a non-inclusive environment is what? What's really happening? I only had eight participants. It was a qualitative study, so like in depth interviews. It was phenomenologically informed, that's a word I used in my master's degree and I loved it. And it, so it really focuses on the lived experience. What happened, what was the experience and what meaning does that experience have? How did it

Alexis: 19:41

make me feel? Lisa. That's fantastic. Like that research is so powerful, but it is also so interesting. And while you were saying what she found in your findings from this research. I felt like I resonated with every single one, cuz I was like, yep, I've heard that before. Yes, I would self-identify as a tomboy myself. Yes, I would identify that because I've already previously worked within these environments that I can now work within a male dominated environment. But then I think what's really interesting is following up your research and having those questions of being like, okay, do you change your appearance? Do you change kinda aspects? Of your identity to be able to fit in, and if that's a yes, what does that mean? Does that actually mean that you fit in and that this is inclusive? My gut would be no. You have to be able to present yourself completely, authentically for it to be an inclusive practice. When we move to solutions, is there any studies right now on how to solve it, or is it still very theoretical? We don't have that lived experience of an inclusive practice. Does that exist? Do we have anything in literature that's showing solutions? And then if not, what would be your gut reaction and like your gut off the top to try to increase inclusivity within a classroom?

Lisa: 20:54

I haven't been able to find any research that supports solutions, and I talk about that in my dissertation. A lot of the studies on women in trades, they'll talk about all these, the different things that are happening to women, and then they'll make a call for transformation. We need to transform the culture. But there hasn't been a lot of work on actually transforming the culture or work that's been done to make those transformations, that I've been able to identify. Specific experience of the participants in my research as well as other research vary. So this person experienced, this when they came to work and somebody said this to them, and this person had, their instructor made a se make a sexist comment to them, and this person had, so there's a lot of different specific experiences that are reported in the research. I found that the common thing that applies to all of these experiences is gender microaggression. Okay. I was able to look at the different things that happened in all these other research studies as well as my own research, and I could link just about every. Implicit bias or subtle experience that women have to the seven things of microaggression, gender microaggression. And one author that I cite in my dissertation describes microaggression as the manifestation of implicit bias? So if something's manifested, this is something that is real. Now, if we can start having conversations about gender microaggression. Then we're not talking in ambiguities about, oh, this is what happened to her and this is what happened to her and this is what happened to her. There's hundreds of them. Thousands of different stories of, yeah, what's happening to women. My personal opinion is that just about all of them can be linked to gender microaggression. The tangible thing That we can start hanging this on and start really talking about and having real conversations about. I only found one other study. It was about, women in STEM classrooms in a university in engineering. No research on women in apprenticeship classrooms specifically. So I leaned a lot on stem and there was only one other study that linked the experiences of the women to gender microaggression as well. So the good news is that we can put our finger on some of the, some of these subtleties And have a way to explain what's happening to women and. And men, cuz men, they're also brought up in the same social construct. So this is all normalized behavior for them as well, and they can't understand what they're doing wrong. And women too, I microaggression is very pervasive and very subtle. Most people don't realize that they're doing it right. So how do we have start to have different conversations? When I think about changes in practice, I think we need to think about transformational action versus affirmative action. So affirmative action is something we continue to do. We try to get more women in the trades. We try to expose them. Employers come to me when I'm a dean and they say, how do I find the women? Where are the women? I'm trying to build it. When are they gonna come, right? And so there's, but I think we need to focus on transformational action and. I can give you an example of this So something that's experienced by a few participants in my research had to do with, student groups. So you're in the classroom. It's the first couple of weeks of the program, and the instructors tell you all to get yourself into groups of four so you can do a project together. The women would never be picked Yeah. Into these groups, right? So all the girls end up in one group and there's this real, Feeling that, a guy will be picked because he's considered capable until he proves otherwise. Where a woman is considered a little incapable until she proves otherwise. Which is a little bit backward. Yes. If we were to take affirmative action, the instructor would say, okay, I'll just pick the groups and I'll mix'em up and I'll make sure that the girls are with the guys. That would be affirmative action. Transformational action would be a conversation. About implicit bias in the room and kind of address it in a non-threatening way so we can start having these conversations and really address the underlying implicit bias Yes. That cause the behavior instead of trying to address the behavior itself.

Alexis: 25:07

I love that answer, Lisa. I think that's so wonderful because it's so tangible. Because I think like something that happens when we have these conversations is they become big and theoretical and they also become, we'll have this conversation at a set time, at a set conference where we talk about diversity and equity and it Kind of seems. Taken away from reality or taken away from your everyday life. Something like that quick example of being like, okay, why did that just happen? Why did you just put all of the women together and what was, what went through your head? Why did you do that? I think that's so tangible because it does bring you back to the moment of this is what happens every single day, and this is a decision that happens every single day and. With your answer of microaggressions, I thought what was also so brilliant about that is finally having maybe. Something to pin our hat on and not having to do story by story. Because I think if you do a story by story basis, it becomes almost a huge she said situation and everything is interpreted to be like, is that actually correct? Is that information Real as it reputable? Whereas if we have it all under one category of microaggression and we can talk about that as a topic and that as a theory, I think that's far more powerful. In your research, was there anything that was very surprising or very different than what you would expect? Is there anything else that really stood out or surprised you when you started this research?

Lisa: 26:33

And I think a lot of academics would be disappointed that I wasn't as surprised right. As coming from, male dominated spaces myself. And I remember older brothers when I was very young telling me that I could go with them to the swimming pool, but I needed to learn to act like a boy, right? I learned early how to be included. Becomes really ingrained and I think maybe the thing that surprised me the most was my own lack of awareness about what was happening to me and what had been happening to me through my life and how I had navigated these spaces. Yeah. And how many other women. Don't have that level of awareness about even what a microaggression is. There's something really interesting I found in the research out there that I talk about a lot when people ask me about my research. There's a group of psychologists who do a lot of work around microaggression. And they did a study on gender microaggression in about 2012. They looked at responses to microaggression, to women who identified at different places on a femininity scale? So there's this femininity scale comes from a paper that was written in 1985, that puts people on a scale from passive acceptance to active commitment when it comes to feminism. And I was always one of those people. I grew up in the eighties. Yeah. So I was like, don't worry about me. I'm not a troublemaker. Yeah. I'm not a feminist. I would associate more with the guy so that I would fit in and not be considered one of those troublemaking kind of people. I learned that really early and. It has significant impact over years and years. So what they found is women who had identify more as what we described as that tomboy are actually much less likely to recognize a microaggression when it happens to them, right? So even though many microaggressions they experience, affect them over time, it does have an impact. I'm sure that there's women out there that are. Crying in the car on the way home, and you're not even sure why you feel bad or why it feels so crappy. No one was mean, no one's happy actually harassing me at work. But it becomes so subtle and it's these little, pin pricks all day. A lot of the women are the type that have learned how to cope in these environments. Have normalized a lot of that behavior. It's just how the boys are, that's how guys are and this is what you have to do in order to get along and yeah. all of those things that we say and we're not even recognizing, I guess those, or validating ourselves in that space where those things are happening to us. And we blame ourselves or we We brush it off, choke it down. So there's a lot of women I think, that are feeling these things and really need validation. Because that those microaggressions, they're so subtle and, they're just as hard to take when you have a lot of them happening over time, and it's actually harder to take because when you have overt harassment, it's really easy to point at that person and say, that person is a jerk. But when it's, benevolent sexism and someone is really nice to you, but makes you feel like crap, how do you define that? How do you validate your feelings in that space?

Alexis: 29:41

How do you speak about it too? How do you actually have any action to that or bring it to Yeah. A supervisor. It's very hard to formalize and it's very hard to get retribution because you don't even maybe understand it yourself. I think that becomes a thing of being like, my feelings aren't really valid and how he just made me feel, I, it must be all in my head. It breaks my heart that you had that realization of being like, oh my goodness, what? What did I go through and how did that affect me and how did that change my behavior? I'm happy that you had that realization and had that kind of awakening, but at the same time, it's so sad. It's so deeply sad because I know as I've gotten older, I don't think I'm there yet of realizing In every aspect of how I've changed my personality or how I've changed my presentation. Depending on my situation. But I know as I've gotten older and I've realized to be like, wow, you really, you limited yourself, or you made yourself really small, or you tried to fit into your. To an environment to protect yourself. Like something about that environment screamed at you that it was unsafe or that it was uncomfortable, and so you molded yourself in a way that potentially you could be immune to prejudice or immune to sexism, or immune to harassment or sexual assault. It's a very sad thing when you realize it.

Lisa: 30:52

There's a few points I wrote in the dissertation about the tomboy piece and It's a source of pride to fit in, right? Yeah. And it's, and making it in a male-dominated environment, it's like a, it's like a badge of honor. But it actually reinforces the patriarchy, right? So if you're fitting in, you're taking on that ideology and you're essentially saying, this is the truth. This is what is, this is what is normal. So if I act like a girl, I'm gonna be othered. And so I don't wanna be othered. So I learned how to act like a guy.

Alexis: 31:26

Like I found myself, like I started within this industry when I was like 19, and I'm really ashamed of this behavior now, but I think that it's powerful to speak on it and to To be truthful about it. I remember that me being a tomboy and me being fitting in, it was a source of pride. And other girls, they couldn't cut it and other girls, they couldn't. They presented as their true, authentic selves. And I remember being like, oh my goodness, she's wearing makeup like, Who cares? She was being herself. I wasn't. I wasn't being truthful to myself. And I probably honestly was jealous that she had authentic presentation in the workplace, and I hadn't reached that point of comfort that I was able to do. So it was a true jealousy thing, but it does enforce that misconception of having to look a certain way or act a certain way to be able to survive in these environments It definitely enforces the patriarchy and it's an odd, terrible cycle that we find ourselves in. Exactly. If we're looking at your research, Lisa, and if we're going from classroom. Do you find any draw or any similarities when we look at a workplace, is there anything that we can put in practice how we understand inclusivity now in the classroom and we can use this and we can put it into a workplace? Any transition there?

Lisa: 32:41

A lot of the experiences of the participants in my research were similar to the experiences that they would have in the workplace, but happened less often on a smaller scale. So I would say that the classroom is, Probably more inclusive than most workplaces. There are some workplaces out there that are great and I often give women the advice It's not what we should have to do, but sometimes you have to just find the right place to work. In order to, and, I found it interesting that you used the word survival. Why do we even have that in our language, right? Yeah. We talk about, how our language is actually tells really the truth of, what we're experiencing. I think that it's important that. That people understand that inclusivity it doesn't mean that women are simply allowed to be there, so that means they're included, right? Yeah. I don't even know if it speaks to diversity, because diversity is about bringing those people's views into different things and decision making and all of that. But it really means providing that environment where they're included as women and can be their authentic selves without adjusting. And if we are adjusting, then the environment is inclusive. It's exhausting. And I think that's why a lot of women don't stay in the train. Why would I continue to exhaust emotionally and physically exhaust myself every single day, when the person's working next to me, doesn't have to do that. I think having those conversations, is. Is important. I think it's important for both women and men To be aware of maybe that gender microaggression space, if we can start talking about it and start, training folks both in the workplace and in the classroom about this, and people can start. Then you start to see it in yourself when people put that little nugget into your brain a little bit, and maybe you start to, to realize what's coming out of your mouth and how that might sound sometimes. It's just a learning curve for everyone. I think it's the same conversation really. Yeah. Our kind are great more and men and women, yeah. Need to be having it and doing it just as you described,. When that woman wearing the makeup comes on the work site, are you so ingrained in that social construct of that male dominated environment that, that you begin to look at that person differently? And how do we manage that? So both women and men, I think, need to become more aware. And I think women need to feel more validated. I read that it takes about 20 to 25% of a workplace to be women for that culture to naturally start to tip. Wow, that's a lot. Lot. So how do we get, how do we get from six to

Alexis: 35:20

20? Oh my God. God, that's a huge

Lisa: 35:23

jump. Yes. We've been trying, we've been trying for 20 years, right? And so something has to be different. We need to do something differently.

Alexis: 35:29

We've been on the same struggle for 20 years, and it is this big transformation idea, but what does that actually mean in, in practice? And how do you bring us up to 25? That's crazy that's what you need to have true inclusivity or for them to be authentically presented themselves with 25. It's a big. Big jump to go. Is there anything that gives you hope? Is it maybe those communities? Is it maybe having these conversations and where do you think is the most challenging aspect of being a woman in trades? Is it kind of everything that we've been talking about? Is there something that we've missed in that conversation?

Lisa: 36:04

Most of the challenges of that women in trades are having is very similar, like the very same barriers we've been talking about for years. But as we talked about a little bit earlier, a lot of the stuff is, it's ambiguous, right? When someone doesn't even understand what somebody just did to them and how do they report it or how do they even have that conversation. I think I'm hopeful that. As both, men and women become aware of how a non-inclusive culture is perpetuated, we can start to work together to change it and reestablish what we consider normal behavior. So that hegemonic masculine culture is considered very normal. If we truly want women in the trades, we have to change normal. In the past, I think, Normal is outside of women. Even as I'm saying that we have to change normal, and then I'm feeling as I'm saying that oh, someone's gonna be pissed at me when I say that. Because it's just, that's what's normal. But it's not normal isn't good enough to include everybody.

Alexis: 37:07

Normal is flawed and normal has always been flawed. It was also set up in a time where Especially in a culture like trades or in a culture like stem, when it was predominantly white and it was predominantly male, so that normal from the get go was never designed for a majority of the population. Yes, we have to change from normal, but it's a big change and what does that look like?

Lisa: 37:27

I think women need to feel that they can be their authentic selves, without having to fight a battle. We're gonna need the support of the men. And I think there's a lot of men who are supportive and honestly don't know how to help. They're not sure how to change it either.

Alexis: 37:45

I think a lot of men also don't thrive in this culture that we have right now. Because I think the culture is one of, bullying, it's one of intimidation. And I think it's one of like machoism and I don't think it really helps anybody within it. On a bigger scale. Is there anything right now that's exciting you, or giving you hope? Is there maybe a trend in trades, a trend in aviation? A trend in women in trades. What's something that we could end on that has given you hope and has made you feel like, okay. Yeah, you know what? I think the future's gonna be okay.

Lisa: 38:17

I think there's a couple of things I mentioned earlier that, employers, they come and talk to us and and they say, where are the women? We wanna hire women, we need more women in our workplace. Which means, they're open to having that conversation about the work that needs to be done in order to shift the culture. And you can have a lot of policy, but if that foreman on the floor doesn't believe in it, then it's not gonna change in practice, right? I think it's really, doing a lot of work at all levels in an organization, to make it a supportive state space and inclusive space. To me, that's really exciting. I think that helps a lot. The other thing that comes to mind is, Canadian Apprenticeship Forum, I think it was back in about 2017 or 2018, started having, supporting Women in Trades conference. And over a couple of conferences, they built a national strategy to support women in states trades with some very tangible action items and. They're doing a lot of great work and there are some, spaces across the country that are doing really great work. The Office to Advance Women in Trades in Newfoundland and Labrador has gotten that number from three to 10% and holding. Wow. Amazing. So there is some really good work that's being done. Working through funding models and things like that in order to replicate some of that stuff across the country is important. I think the supporting women in trades, national strategy is really important. I'm hoping to write them a report based on my researchers. There is a call for educators amazing as part of that national strategy, so I'm hoping I, I'll have an opportunity to speak to that

Alexis: 39:54

as well. Oh, that's fantastic. That's a perfect answer. And I love that 10% in holding. It sounds like this is an area of research where there's been a lot of research, but there hasn't been many kind of tangible solutions that are known to be like, okay, you can put this in place and this is what you would expect. So that's lovely to see. True progress and tangible kind of results. Lisa, thank you so much for taking the time and speaking with us today. I learned so much and I loved diving into your research and talking about inclusivity. I just really appreciate it. It was a lovely conversation. Thanks. Thank you, Alexis. No, it was lovely to speak with you and just thank you again. Thank you for taking this time. For those listening, this is the Smoke Roll podcast. We will have a new episode for y'all next Wednesday. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. I hope you learned a thing or two. I know I did. We will see you next week. Bye