The following article is excerpted from Seattle Woman magazine, July 2005. The complete text can be read here.
 

By Joanna Kadish

Sweeping her strong, knotted hands in front of her, Margaret Schab explained what the past 11 years has been like for an ex-accountant turned electrician. In particular, she’s enjoyed the two and a half years with the Port of Seattle where she’s worked on a number of diverse tasks providing power to fish processors and marinas.

“My satisfaction is a lot higher now,” says Schab. “What I do is important, keeping power going so a lot of people can do their jobs. On top of that, I’m getting paid well. It’s pretty incredible, actually.”

Given the potential earnings, it’s puzzling why more women do not choose a vocation in the trades. Union members have a pension plan, and the average salary of a unionized worker is $60,590 a year or $29.13 an hour – not including medical and dental benefits.

Meanwhile, the construction industry is anticipating a shortage of skilled workers brought about by an aging workforce. And the number of women seeking employment is expected to increase by 15.1 percent, according to the Department of Labor.

What’s Keeping Women Away?

The notion that trade jobs are unfeminine may discourage some women from exploring further. Ruby Jones, community affairs director for Turner Construction, says that when she goes out to high schools some of the girls insinuate that only masculine women work hard-hat jobs.

Terry Tilton, assistant to the executive secretary of Washington State Building Trades Council, a lobbying group for the construction industry at the state capitol in Olympia, believes the failure to attract women to the trades has to do with a “disconnect between our industry and schools.” She cites a poll done by Janet Paulsen-Smith, an assistant professor at East Carolina University, who found middle-school students ranked construction 248th on a list of career possibilities, between agricultural and janitorial work.

Discrimination during hiring is also being explored as a possible barrier. Tradeswomen Now and Tomorrow (TNT) did a study of publicly funded construction sites across the country, using independent monitors to oversee the hiring process. The group discovered that the use of monitors led to an increase in the number of women who signed on.

The inherent danger of the work must also be acknowledged. Construction work can be treacherous, employing two percent of the workforce and accounting for 20 percent of all job-related fatalities. The daily drain and physical hardships take a toll on men and women alike, which may partially account for why women don’t last as long as men at the journey level.

A Man’s World?

Melinda Nichols, a manager with Seattle Parks and Recreation, holds the distinction of having been, in 1973, the first female carpenter hired in heavy construction since World War II. “They hired me as a carpenter at Western Washington University on a lark,” Nichols said. Citing the ribbing she took on the job, Nichols says that when she attended a lecture in 1977 on harassment, she thought to herself, “I’ve been harassed for years and never knew it.”

The women interviewed for this article largely agreed that for a woman to go into construction, she must be willing to make it in a man’s world. Past research shows that not much has changed in this regard. Author M.L. Walshok interviewed 87 blue-collar women over three years. The women who succeeded, according to Walshok, shared similar traits with men who entered the trades: They were athletic, enjoyed working with tools and took an active interest in cars.

Susan Eisenberg interviewed 30 women in construction for a book published by Cornell University in 1998 on women in trades, and concluded that on the job “men’s reactions ranged from hostile to protective.”

A more recent study by TNT found that a few men on job sites were refusing to teach women certain tools and machines necessary to expand their skills. “Women tell me they have asked to learn the backhoe and the men said, ‘that’s not for you’,” said Maureen McFadden, vice president of Legal Momentum. She continues: “By the time women reach journey level, they don’t have the skills to compete for jobs. That’s the core issue of the discrimination.”

Marie Beedle, a field superintendent for Hoffman Construction, observes that there are two sides to this story. As a supervisor, she encounters women who won’t do the heavy work. “You have to be willing to do the same as a guy,” she says. “If a guy asks you if you need help, you’ve got to say no, I can handle this. Some just want to be the sweep-up girls - they aren’t going to develop skills.”

Beedle says she was hired to fill minority hiring goals by a sub-contractor. “I worked for him for seven years and I did it all. I started as a flagger, but I didn’t stay there; I demanded to learn and they were willing to teach me. I ran the backhoe, boom truck, poured concrete, handled plumbing and pipe work. After a year I took on small supervisory roles, and now I’m overseeing one entire construction site.”

Alice Lockridge, fitness training coordinator for the City of Seattle and Seattle City Light in their apprenticeship and technical training department, believes that strong government oversight and apprenticeship programs have created a safety net for women. Although discrimination isn’t as rampant, it exists. “Guys can’t run women off so easily. But they still try. Like in any industry, a few of the men are bullies and the silent majority won’t stand up to them.”

“I went out and busted my heinie every day and made a name for myself,” says Tawny Sayers, a single mom who graduated from Renton Technical and worked laying concrete and pipe for eight years before she became an apprenticeship coordinator for the Northwest Laborers Employer Training Trust Fund. “It’s very physical work and a lot of women don’t want to get dirt under their fingernails or listen to foul-mouthed men, but that’s what a woman’s gotta do if she wants to make it. She can’t be crying all the time about half-naked pictures or dirty jokes. As a woman, I was always under the microscope. I couldn’t sit around like the guys. I had to work harder than they did to earn their respect.”

Port of Seattle’s Schab believes that if a woman “works smart” and shows how much of an asset she can be, men will come around. “I can do things that a man can’t do,” she says. “A man can’t fit into crawl spaces like I can, nor can he stick his arm into holes to fish out wires like me.”

Joanne Kadish is a freelance writer living on Mercer Island.

Port Jobs researching successes, challenges for women in construction

In partnership with Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Employment for Women and Men (ANEW), Port Jobs is researching ways to improve retention of women in the building and construction trades.

The Women in Construction study, to be published in early 2006, will identify factors helping women succeed and barriers women face in the trades, and recommend strategies to improve retention of women at both apprentice and journey levels.