“I Helped Build This.” Yes, SHE Did!
I had the most inspiring day interviewing this fabulous group of badass women, all working on Macklowe’s newest building, One Wall Street.
And big shout out to Dorothy Sexton and the team at Macklowe Properties for setting this up. Also thanks to Brandon Patterson, an advocate for the Skilled Trades in Iowa, who was the first to bring the topic of women in the trades to my attention.
As some of you know I have written extensively about the Trades but had given very little consideration to women in the field (probably because the numbers are still small).
According to the Building & Construction Trades Council of Greater New York City, women currently make up just four percent of the construction unions workforce. But times are a-changing.
- NEW (non-traditional employment for women) offers a two-month pre-apprenticeship training program for women in NYC. Many are unemployed or underemployed women of color.
- When NEW was founded in 1978, it was way ahead of its time. But they anticipated that things would change and that day has finally arrived.
- NEW’s slogan, btw, rocks. Kudos to whoever came up with “Hard Hats. Strong Women. Building The Future.
This is the program Monique Daniels (pic above left), a journeywoman electrician went through almost 20 years ago in order to land an apprenticeship job with Local 3.
One of the things that most impressed me is how much on-going training and education each of the women is receiving from their companies and their unions. It’s absolutely first-rate.
- Each woman made it a point to tell me that safety was the most important skill for anyone in the Trades.
- The trades run quite militaristically e.g. following official protocol and rules is the top priority in ensuring safety.
- Of course, I also asked if it was challenging to work in such a male-dominated field.
- Most had not run into any major issues. They all stressed that the attitude you have coming in makes all the difference. As does being eager to learn and adaptable to the apprenticeship grind i.e. recognizing that you’ll start as a gopher, the lowest of the low in the pecking order of things (and that is the same whether you’re a man or a woman).
- From what I saw, all appeared to be well respected by their fellow workers and had developed great camaraderie with those on the construction site.
Read on for more on the women I interviewed at the construction site. I also had the opportunity to speak with Kara Shypula who is a Project Manager at Hoffmann Architects working with this same team on the Macklowe building. She’s not in the Trades but shares the same work environment and is one of very few women in this role.
Justine Collins is an Assistant Project Manager with Skyline Restoration.
Many people in Justine’s family are in the Trades so the switch from her office job to Project Management at Skyline was taken in stride by her family. She was the only woman I interviewed who had a family background in the Trades.
As with all the other women, she finds her job incredibly gratifying and challenging on a daily basis, and has not had problems adapting to — or being accepted — by her male peers.
Monique Daniels, Journeywoman Electrician with Forest Electrics.
- Monique is a specialist in both fiber-optics splicing and high-voltage testing.
- She came to the Trades through the NEW program
- She has worked on numerous buildings throughout the city, moving from project to project with her foreman in what I perceived to be an “A-team” at Forest Electrics.
- As with all the women I interviewed, Monique expressed tremendous pride and a sense of accomplishment at being able to point out, to friends and family, specific projects she’s workedi on over the years.
Rita Krcic is an Inspections Supervisor for J.T. Magen & Company, the general contractor on the project.
Rita is responsible for making sure that every aspect of the building passes inspection. She did not say this, but I know this is a HUGE job and her responsibilities are major! And I know this because as an active member of a small co-op building, I have experienced firsthand how nerve-wracking it is when city officials come by to do routine inspections. Rita’s job is this x 1000!
Rita’s background was originally in banking. She transitioned to construction at the recommendation of a friend who thought she was exceptionally well-qualified for this kind of detail-oriented position. Additionally, the good-pay and benefits were appealing since she was raising two sons on her own at the time.
As with all the other women, Rita clearly finds her job incredibly gratifying and wants to encourage more women to consider it as a career path. Her advice to young women is to “Just go for it!”
Kara Shypula, Assoc. AIA and Project Manager at Hoffmann Architects, has a slightly different background in that she came to the building trades through architecture.
I was fascinated to learn that Kara knew by age 5 that building things would be in her future. She had drawn a picture of a building, shown it to her dad and told him that’s what she was going to do when she grew up. And she never veered from that plan — which is quite a remarkable achievement in and of itself.
Like the other women I spoke with, Kara had tales of people not quite knowing what to make of her when they saw her with her hard hat and work boots.
- Once on the subway, a woman asked her if the hard hat was her boyfriend’s — even though Kara was covered in construction grime. However, when she explained that she was indeed the Project Manager at a major building site, the woman was awe-struck and told her how cool it was to meet her. Lesson learned: women can be just as stuck in conventional thinking about gender roles as men.
Kara’s summation of the rules to live by as a woman working in an extremely male-dominated field, bear repeating since they were also expressed, in one way or another, by each of her female construction site colleagues:
- Be confident
- Learn to react in non-emotional ways
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions — lots of them if necessary.
- Learn everything you need to know — and be honest (and humble) about what you don’t know.
- Work hard.
- Smile and have a good attitude
What impressed me so much about these four women was how much they love what they’re doing. It’s inspiring to see people working at something they find so satisfying. They’re also all dedicated, lifelong learners. For each, it is a priority to keep her skill set sharp and up-to-date. Most are planning on getting additional accreditation as well.
As they said, you have to prove that you deserve that seat at the table! And each of these women has certainly earned that right!
Finally, I wanted to share some recent research from the UK that happens to be 100% relevant in America as well.
The latest available official figures, for 2016–17, in the UK show that only 620 females started apprenticeships in construction and the build environment, compared with more than 20,000 males.
Emily Burridge, 22, (below) has been a technical production manager at Hanson Aggregates, a sand and gravel supplier with a string of 25 quarries, concrete and asphalt plants.
- Her staff are overwhelmingly male and much, much older — but she says it has not been a problem.
- “As long as you’re honest about what you know and what you don’t, you show that you actually want to grow your knowledge, and that you appreciate their side of things, then they’re perfectly respectful and they acknowledge any feedback you give them,” she says.
The big question she always faces is: why are you doing this?
- It was her grandad who suggested trying for a degree apprenticeship, where the employer pays your tuition fees and you earn a salary.
- “This one grabbed my attention because it offered working outdoors, which I hadn’t considered before. But seeing as my family were all very hands on as well, my dad’s a mechanic, my grandparents were farmers, it appealed to me.”
- Despite being one of only four females out of about 40 apprentices since the scheme began seven years ago, she has felt incredibly well-supported.
- She wants more young women to come forward: “I think they’re very put off by the fact that it’s working outside and you can get dirty… but mostly I think it’s that they don’t consider it an option, I didn’t consider it an option.”
Bottom Line.
I’m hoping that many more young women will start to consider the trades as an option when thinking about careers. Construction and the trades offer exceptionally important, interesting and gratifying work with good pay and excellent benefits. I say: Go For It!
And again, big thanks to Brandon Patterson for putting this idea about women in the Trades on my radar — and for being so helpful and supportive along the way.
To Dorothy Sexton and the Macklowe crew that organized this — BIG BIG THANKS! Can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you did to make this happen.
And finally, and most importantly, major thanks to Justine, Monique, Rita and Kara for spending time with me, for sharing their journeys and for inspiring all of us. I’m still a bit awe-struck!
