Women in White Decorators – and Clare

Women in White Decorators is a female owned and operated painting and decorating business, based in  Wellington.  Caroline Robinson has been a painter and decorator for 25 years and created Women in White in 2006. 

Women in White are known as the ‘invisible painters’ – they pride themselves on great customer service and a high standard of work. 

We interviewed Caroline and Clare Dunkerley – who is now a fully qualified painter and decorator after doing a three-year apprenticeship.

What are the benefits of an all women painting company?

Caroline believes the greatest benefit of female painters is their ability to meet the customer’s needs:

“The customers appreciate the things that women do such as tidiness, attention to detail. We always quality check at the end of a job – so we leave the house and walk back in pretending to be the customer – do it once and do it right.”

Other benefits include:

• providing unique points of difference for the business
• customers often feeling more comfortable with female decorators – particularly female and elderly customers
• doing a top quality job for customers.

Caroline suggested that the ‘niche’ market enabled Women in White to get through the recession.  While other painting companies have struggled over the past couple of years, Women in White have repeat customers that have kept the work flow constant.

The benefits of being a tradeswoman

Clare believes that being a tradeswoman provides good job satisfaction – you can see the end result. She also appreciates the portability of being a painter – “it’s the same everywhere”, so provides an opportunity to travel and work.

What works to attract and retain women in trades?

Clare would like it if there were more women working as painters.  She believes women lack information and, as a result, do not even consider a trades career.  Clare believes that teachers and careers advisors should be providing more information to women.  She also believes that employers could do more to attract women – “advertise better, and create suitable working conditions that women want to work in”.

Caroline says that Women in White’s advertising highlights the fact it is a woman run company – and that attracts women who want to work for the company.  Caroline also actively seeks female trainees through the local polytechnic.

Caroline believes communication with staff and providing an on-going challenge is what helps keep women working in the trade. This involves:

• listening to what staff want – ‘You find you’re a counsellor as well as an employer’.
• seeing what they can achieve and believing they can do it.

Caroline’s goal is to have more women working as painters, and perhaps to branch out to have an all women home renovation company.

“Women have a ‘can do’ attitude. ‘I never did this for money; I did it to get women out there’. My dream is to see more women in painting.”

 For more information on Women in White Decorators click here.