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“The system has really short-changed our men”

Trades training key to engaging young males in higher education

SARA MINOGUE

Click photo to enlarge
Puujjuut Kusugak, on the far right, was the only male in a Nunavut Teacher Education Program music class in Iqaluit this spring. It’s part of an emerging trend in which twice as many Inuit women as men go on to higher education. (PHOTO BY SARA MINOGUE)

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But that system soon disappeared as more and more Inuit women joined the workforce, as is increasingly evident in government offices and private businesses where Inuit women are beginning to outnumber men.

“We were the first generation to attend schools,” says Naullaq Arnaquq, during a recent discussion on the growing gender divide. “Our generation is where I think there is a gender difference in jobs now.”

Many young women seized the opportunities that education could provide, and found staying indoors or studying was not too different from their traditional lifestyle. Meanwhile, Inuit men, who were used to providing for the family by hunting, often preferred to do manual or technical work.

That worked well during the time when young men could pursue that type of work in Fort Smith, NWT and receive their trades tickets, but that vocational training centre was lost when Nunavut was created in 1999.

Without trade schools drawing men into higher education, men have fewer opportunities to pursue higher education and get the kind of jobs that lead to better jobs, further education, and eventually management and decision-making roles.

“Men have been shortchanged by the system,” Arnaquq says. “There were many opportunities before for men to further their skills. With no learning opportunities, where will you go? The system has really shortchanged our men.”

Arnaquq is one of several women who got her start at the teacher education program — moving on to different jobs until becoming deputy minister at the Government of Nunavut’s department of culture, languages, elders and youth.

Eva Aariak is another. Her teaching career lead her to a job as a book publishing coordinator, which lead to a job as a radio and TV reporter with CBC. Next she headed public affairs for the Office of the Interim Commissioner of Nunavut before she eventually became Nunavut’s first official languages commissioner. Today, she is a partner at Iqaluit’s Pirurvik Centre, an independent consultancy that specializes in language and culture.

“We have qualified tradesmen, with tickets, who have gone through the old system,” said Aariak, who describes a direct correlation between trades training opportunities and the type of career paths that are available for men.

“I’m amazed that our politicians have overlooked that. We fly in people from the South to do work that could be done by people here.”

Both Aariak and Arnaquq recall more vocational training available at the high school level in the 1970s and ‘80s. Now, they say, the focus is mainly on academics, and the introductory trades programs offered at Nunavut Arctic College are “Mickey Mouse” — offering introductions to trades for which no further training is available in Nunavut.

Annie Quirke is also part of the generation that grew up alongside the new settlements. She started her career as a counselor, with training in Iqaluit and through various courses provided by the GNWT. She’s now in her first year of the nursing program at Nunavut Arctic College — along with several other women, and one male.

Leena Evic, who is of the same generation, also started as a teacher, and made several career changes before developing the Pirurvik Centre.

All of these women recognize the differences between genders — noting that girls have a tendency to do their homework more than boys, for example, or that men have a tendency to want to go whale hunting at certain times of the year rather than work at office jobs.

These differences, however, are not enough to explain the growing divide between men and women in the modern economy.

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