Lean In circles help women in construction navigate bias
NEW YORK — Bethany Mayer didn’t want to go back to work after learning that a fellow ironworker insinuated that women like her didn’t belong there.
Jordyn Bieker, an apprentice sheet metal worker in Denver, said she felt uncomfortable that her foreman asked her pointed questions about being gay.
Yunmy Carroll, a veteran steamfitter, said a worker at a training session declared that women in construction are “whores.”
The three women shared their stories over Zoom during a Lean In Circle for Tradeswomen, one of 76 launched in Canada and the U.S. this year by the North America’s Building Trades Unions and Lean In, the women’s advocacy group started by Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
About 700 tradeswomen are participating in the program, designed to help them navigate persistent bias and harassment on construction sites, from unwanted sexual advances to being assigned lesser duties such as traffic control or fire watch.
It’s a culture that industry leaders are fighting to change in the hopes of recruiting more women.
As spending on infrastructure rises, construction firms will need to hire at least 430,000 new skilled labourers in 2021, according U.S. data by the Associated Builders and Contractors.
Right now, only 4% of construction labourers in the U.S. are women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“We are really only employing from half the workforce,” said Brian Turmail, the Associated General Contractors of America’s vice-president of public affairs, who also spearheads workforce development. “We are struggling with labour shortages with one hand tied behind our back.”
This comes at a time when the pandemic has exacted a disproportionate toll on jobs where women dominate, such as restaurant servers and cashiers. Nearly 2.5 million women lost jobs during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, much of the construction industry was deemed essential, sparing it from mass layoffs. For advocates, it is evidence that more women should aspire to construction careers, which start with paid apprenticeships and can lead to unionized jobs with middle-class wages.
The median salary for plumbers and electricians, for instance, is about $56,000 US a year, with the top 10% of earners making $98,000. But only about 2% of plumbers and 3% of electricians in the U.S. are women.
“We see this all the time. When jobs are higher paid, when jobs have more security, when jobs have higher benefits, they often go to men,” said Sandberg, who partnered with NABTU to bring her signature Lean In program to tradeswomen.
Judaline Cassidy, a New York plumber and union leader, formed a Lean In Circle on her own in 2017.
Cassidy often recalls being told to go home and do the dishes when she first tried to join a union more than two decades ago. But her career has also been empowering, and her daughter, Carey Mercer, followed her into the trades.
“You’re always learning something every day. There’s always some kind of challenge that you might run into where you might need to do some math or think about it and take a second a look at it,” said Mercer, an apprentice sheet metal worker.
Gains already made by women appear to have held steady during the pandemic. The share of women employed in the industry rose, reaching 13.2% in 2020, compared with 12.5% in 2016.
Since those figures include office roles, it not clear how much of those gains were made by skilled labourers. But the number of women who graduated from NABTU’s pre-apprenticeship programs reached an all-time high of 23% of graduates this year.
Pre-apprenticeship programs targeting women and minorities have proliferated over the past decade. In sign of their growing influence, the Iron Workers Union became the first construction union to adopt paid maternity leave in 2017.
The most uphill challenge is changing cultural attitudes in the field.
Mayer, the apprentice welder from the Cincinnati area, had been excited about a new job. But then she learned about the co-worker who said women shouldn’t be ironworkers. And she was put on fire watch for weeks.
“I don’t even want to go in tomorrow,” Mayer recently told her Lean In Circle, a group of six women who meet over Zoom once a month.
The women encouraged her to be direct and remind her foreman of her skills as a welder. By the time they met in July, Mayer had pushed successfully for welding duties.
Patti Devlin, the circle leader, turned the July conversation to a perennial issue: constantly having to prove yourself.
Veronica Leal, a Chicago painter who teaches an apprenticeship program, told the group she has faced that problem for 27 years.
Four years ago, a client at an upscale apartment building told her she couldn’t possibly handle a difficult paper hanging job because she was a woman.
Leal’s supervisor told her to stay put while he called the client. Leal refused.
“I just got so angry. I’ve been doing this for 24 years and I’m done proving myself,” Leal said.