Jade Musther in the Cahoots Workshop. Photo: Supplied
A new workshop space in Wellington aims to encourage more women and gender diverse people to learn how to build, fix and make things.
The Cahoots Workshop is a traditional makerspace - like a MENZSHED - but it is only open to women and gender diverse people.
Founder and director Jade Musther said the workshop, in Pōneke's Mt Cook suburb, was the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.
It would offer those groups a safe and supportive space to build practical skills and confidence, as well as foster community in the trades and hands-on creativity.
Classes might range from learning to repair holes in plasterboard to making garden furniture out of pallet wood to 3D printing.
There was still an extreme gender inequity in the trades, with less than three percent of tradies in Aotearoa identifying as women, she added.
The former engineering and construction worker said that she had always been "very aware of the extreme gender inequity in those spaces and in wider sort of practical spaces like DIY".
Musther said she originally set up Cahoots Limited, a non-profit company, in 2021, "as a kind of queer tradie collective ... a sort of unified brand with non traditionally gender diverse and queer tradies".
The idea of the workshop came about after teaching a community class specifically for women and gender diverse people.
"When we ran that class it became extra apparent to me how much need there is in the space for those skills, how much desire there is for those skills and how excluded from those spaces these communities have traditionally been. It was just really wonderful to see the sort of empowerment that came through in that space.
"By the end of the class, we had folks who had come in scared of tools, teaching each other things that they had learned and just having these deep conversations about sort of the difference between a drill and an impact driver. Everyone was very passionate to get into this space in a way that they feel safe and empowered and supported, which is such a contrast to how women and queer folks typically feel in those spaces."
Keeping the space exclusive to those groups was crucial, she added.
"Even when you bring cis-gendered men who are really well-meaning into that space, it can trigger the responses that have been conditioned into these people to minimise themselves. The few women that we do see in trades have often pushed through that, and so they're prepared to take up space. But folks who never got that opportunity, have been really marginalised in that space and that's triggered even if there's just one really well-meaning cis-gendered man.
"So that's why, in setting up the workshop, we decided it was really important to make it an exclusive space."
The scheme will offer paid memberships, giving members direct access to the workshop, while also providing the chance for people in the community on low incomes who could not afford a membership.
Cahoots would not be a training establishment but it would offer people "an indirect pathway into trades", Musther said. "I would really love to take folks who are using the workshop ... who are interested in getting some sort of job site experience and we can go and build a fence, for example, for a client."
Musther said Cahoots hopes to raise $50,000 by 16 May to fully finish the workshop. It will officially open in July.
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