Why Betty Gave Up Her Job as a Carpenter
“As a woman, I constantly had to prove that I could also work with my hands,” Betty Kappeller recalls of her carpentry apprenticeship. Here she tells us what she had to put up with in her job as a woman, why she gave up the profession after her apprenticeship and why she never gave up carpentry completely.
Betty Kapeller completed her carpentry apprenticeship at the beginning of 2021 and was one of four women out of 60 trainees. After her training, she decided to stop working in the profession.
17 euros gross average earnings per hour with a strenuous 40-hour week: not an attractive prospect for her. But there were other reasons why she decided against staying in the joinery.
According to the Federal Employment Agency, around 84% of employees in plastics, wood production and processing were male in 2021, leaving only around 16% being female.
Betty sometimes felt like a stranger in the company: “As the only woman in the workshop, I was perceived differently and my work was judged differently. Constantly proving that I could also do manual work became too much for me.”
“It was also difficult for me to find work clothes in which I felt comfortable as a woman. The clothes were rather masculine and loose fitting.”
- Betty Kapeller
Can she do it? Does she have enough strength for the job? These were the questions she heard from customers. After completing her training, she decided to pursue the profession as a hobby. Now, in her own workshop at home, nobody doubts that she can do it. She now earns her money in event management.
How do you become a carpenter?
The official job title is “carpenter”. However, “carpenter”:https://web.arbeitsagentur.de/berufenet/beruf/4460#ueberblick and “joiner”:https://www.handwerk.de/infos-zur-ausbildung/ausbildungsberufe/berufsprofile/tischlerin refer to the same profession. There is no difference between the activities of the two professions. If you want to become a carpenter, you generally complete a three-year dual apprenticeship in a company. Dual means that part of the training takes place in the company and the other part at a vocational school.
According to an analysis by the career portal “Stepstone”:https://www.stepstone.de/jobs/schreiner, carpenters earn an average of 32,700 euros per year. The salary range extends from 28,400 euros to 38,300 euros.
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Kim Pälschinski
Kim Pälschinski, born in Siegburg in 1996, always borrowed her father’s camera as a child and went on photo safaris with it. At the age of nine, she started taking photos of her friends at the pony farm with their horses. Word got around about her great photos and more and more people wanted to be photographed by her. She has since turned her passion into a part-time job and now works as an animal and people photographer in Bonn, Cologne and the Rhein-Sieg district.