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Thursday, March 30, 2017
Women turn over new leaf in forestry Workplaces
Next generation uprooting old attitudes, beliefs Sarah-Joyce Battersby Metro | Toronto
The House that love bought Owners sell for thousands less to family that will cherish their community metroNEWS
Kat Berton can deal with the heavy lifting involved in her dream job of urban forestry. What she can’t deal with is the misogyny. The 25-year-old says she’s heard “some nasty opinions” while out in the field and sometimes feels underestimated when it comes to the physical labour of tree planting. “Women and people who present in more feminine ways tend to get a lot of backlash,” she said, pointing to an incident training a group of volunteers at a corporate-sponsored planting day. “There was just a general tone of: ‘You’re a little girl, we know better,’” she said. It’s attitudes like that she was happy to escape when she took part in the Young Urban Forest Leader program run by LEAF, a non-profit dedicated to
nurturing Toronto’s trees. Canadians thought of forestry as The summer-long mentorship pro- primarily “timber and chopping the gram primes young women for a career trees,” she said. in the field, whether in academia, as She still spends a lot of her time arborists or working with municipal- explaining forestry but says more and ities or agencies. more women, and young people in According to Statistics Canada, 82 general, are taking interest. per cent of forestry and logging workLEAF executive director Janet Mcers were men Kay agrees the push to in 2016. That’s get more three per cent women infewer men than in 2012. volved comes As part of as the industry LEAF’s fivebranches out month proin general. gram, parThe proticipants are gram would paired with be equally park-based suited to men, community and she’d like groups to map Last year’s class of young foresters. Contributed to expand it in and inventory the future. trees and start adopt-a-tree programs. But for now, she said, “There’s someDanijela Puric-Mladenovic, an as- thing about the momentum behind sistant professor at the University of women getting interested in this sector Toronto’s forestry school, started her that we want to help keep this moving 30-year career in her native Serbia. and help this expand.” When she arrived in Canada in 1994 Applications for the mentorship she found forestry was a fledgling field, program, as well as community groups mostly dominated by men, especially interested in partnering with LEAF, in leadership roles. are due Friday.
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