Kendall Ansell is Breaking Boundaries for Women Trades at Belle Construction

Kendall is the Owner of Belle Construction and Kendall Ansell Interiors in Vancouver, BC. Originally Kendall’s goal was to start a construction company with as many women trades as possible because of the lack of care from some other trades companies out there currently. She wanted to create a company that represented safety and comfort for families that need to have tradespeople come into their home, and could trust that their home would be treated with care and respect. Within the first few months, she realized it was too difficult to pull off because many of their job postings online were flagged and removed because they held the word “women”. So instead, they wrote a 6-page essay to the human rights tribunal to gain some exemption from those algorithms once they were flagged. Receiving this exemption, Kendall now has 5 years to use this idea without the roadblocks that are put in place. Currently, there are almost 4.2% women tradespeople in British Columbia, which is a very small fraction of the community.

Now over a year into the business, Kendall is happy with their growth. “I think when we first launched the business we launched in really good time when partnerships with the Canadian Government are giving more incentive for women trades,” she explains, they ended up meeting with a lot of organizations that had these programs in place but tradeswomen have to go through a lot of training and a period of time before they can even get into these workplaces. So for now, Kendall is waiting for these women trades to come down the pipeline in the near future.

Kendall’s team came up with the great idea of creating a children's book promoting women in trades, called “Belle and Friends Build A House”. This idea came from the lack of representation of women tradespeople at a young age, so this book is a great tool to teach children that Bob the Builder isn't the only contractor in town! “When you picture, ‘oh I'm going to hire a plumber to come to my house,’ you're not picturing a female showing up. So I think we have a long way to go,” Kendall says she's received a lot of encouragement and praise from her colleagues in the field and also from female tradespeople who have reached out to say how happy they are to see the representation. “We hope to put together even more resources besides what we started with,” Kendall wants to spread the message to all kids out there that they can put their minds to anything they want to. She says that young women that want to get into the trade industry can become tradeswomen by the age of 20, because of FastTrack programs, and you would make more than you would from working in the restaurant industry and with more job stability.

Written by Juliana Bermudez