Happy International Women's Day!

Here at Digga we want to encourage women to work in the male dominated construction industry and raise awareness about motivations for women to join the industry and challenges that women face, when deciding to take this career path.

as studies by the University of NSW have shown in the past, women still only represent a minority of the workforce in Australian Construction. According to Prof. Doc. Bensom Lim, the challenges that lie ahead are the strong masculine culture, discrimination in employment, harassment at the workplace and limited apprenticeship opportunities, which often makes women shy away. There is so much to gain from working in construction and women, who have joined the industry are self-confident and driven by a desire to acquire new skills and completing challenging task. Tiah Selkrig is a perfect example of a woman, who has decided to ‘demolish’ the stereotypes of gender roles in construction and proudly advertises her pink Digga screw anchor drive and matching pink excavator when on site!

Wanting to show construction sites all over the Hunter Valley region that girls can do just as much as boys, Tiah decided she was going to raise the awareness of being a women in construction and painted her Digga drive pink to match the back of her excavator.

Tiah works for AAA Down Under offering earthmoving, civil construction and foundation services to the Hunter Valley region. AAA Down Under is her Dad’s business and she explained growing up around her father using machinery inspired her to become an operator just like him. Today she operates her excavator with the Digga MD190 screw anchor drive to install screw piles and said “I love the Digga drive, it’s the best thing I’ve got!”

Tiah decided to custom paint her Digga MD190 screw anchor drive ‘Breast Cancer Pink’ and she explained “I have a close family friend who got through a battle with breast cancer. The idea of the pink drive was originally for her, but then it also shows it’s mine and that I’m a girl working on the site!”

Tiah has very strong feelings towards being a woman in construction and feels more women need to get involved. “Unless I went through my Dad’s company I don’t think many other businesses would have given me a go as an operator, because I’m female. My pink drive shows I’m a girl and that girls can do just as much as boys can. More women need to get in this kind of work because a lot of men under estimate what we can all do, it’s good fun to prove them wrong and I hope everybody loves my very girly pink drive just as much as I do!”