Women in Trades and Technology hosted its first New Brunswick networking group event in St. John, yesterday, at the New Brunswick Museum. A number of women in the trades or technology-related jobs attended.

Two ‘women in the skilled trades’ events highlighted the week.

In St. Catherines Ontario (Canada), Marissa McTasney was one of the featured speakers at the Niagara Region’s first skilled trades inspiration session. She had worked in construction until two years ago, when she started her own clothing line, a line of women’s workwear.

“(Women in trades) are setting their hours, their rates. They get to dictate what they’re paid,” she told the small crowd.

“Knowing that you can make a decent income is an attraction. Besides that, it stems from a need, like a single female homeowner who suddenly has a plumbing leak and they want to repair it,” YWCA job developer Graves chimed in.

“There are just so many opportunites,” says McTasney. Her line of womens’ workwear can be found at major retailers including Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Zellers.

Meanwhile in Portland, Oregon, ths year’s Women in Trades Career Fair offered young women hands-on experience and straight-out encouragement. Women as young as 14 took a look at opportunities for women in the skilled trades. “I felt like this was a real opportunity to do something different,” said Mindy Luis. “I’m definitely going to look into trade school as an option, when I graduate from high school.”

“I talked to a firefighter who found out about the trades when she came here 17 years ago,” said Connie Ashbrook, executive director of Oregon Tradeswomen. “She came to one of the first fairs and then became a carpenter.”

Missouri Women In Trades, an organization that empowers women through careers in the construction trades recently received the $25,000 Daughters of Charity Foundation of St. Louis award. Congratulations, MWIT!

The province of New Brunswick is stepping up efforts to get women involved in the skilled trades as it adds new development projects and suffers – as do so many areas – from a lack of skilled tradespeople. In 2006, the province invested $4 1/2 million in a project that introduced women on social services to skilled trade work in New Brunswick.  But now it needs even more help as it plans major projects such as a proposed energy corridor with the state of Maine, announced last week, that would see renewable electricity and natural gas exported from Atlantic Canada to the New England states.

Rosella Melanson, Executive Director of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women  says, “There have been very few efforts to get women into non-traditional jobs in the province.”

Other projects in the province include the possible construction of a 500 to 600- megawatt power plant, a 1,200 to 1,500-megawatt transmission line and the addition of an unspecified amount of wind power. All the growth provides an opportunity for both women and smart employers. Says Melanson, “Smart employers will think of women because they are an untapped pool.”

Pat Darrah is the Executive Director of the Saint John Construction Association. He says that the opportunity is always there for women: “We have a number of ladies working out at Point Lepreau and we got a number of ladies working on the maintenance side of the industry and on the industrial side.’ The govenment’s employment initiative has helped, as there are more now and in 2006 there were no women.

Irving Oil is holding a “Women in Trades” networking dinner in May that is part of that company’s intitiative to attract more women.

Elsewhere, women in the workforce are finding that they are getting more respect – slowly – over time. At a celebration of the 30th anniversary of its local chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction, a New York contractor noted how in the early days, many clients treated her “like a secretary.” For women, it may be harder to get respect but they have made great strides, say chapter members, by putting knowledge first.

Kate Beach, an office manager at a fabricating plant called Atlantis Equipment Corp., says, “You just have to know your stuff. You gain that respect the first time you have
someone saying ‘She knows that?’”

While repect for women in construction has ridden the same wave as respect for women in society in general, there are still issues with compensation in New York’s construction trades. “There is not equal compensation,” said Lisa Harding of Lash Contracting in Latham. “In terms of pay, there is a long way to go.”

That same issue haunts New Brunswick’s construction industry: “What is often forgotten is preparing the workplace so that those women are tolerated and welcomed,” Melanson says. “We have seen so many women train for something and then not continue in that line of work because they’ve been harassed from day one or made to be pioneers, and they just move on. It’s a waste of dollars, a waste of talent and we end up with skill shortages.”

But no matter what kind of work anyone faces, there are going to be challenges and problems and ups and downs. Melanson adds, “if you’re a woman looking for a better paying job, going for something non-traditional is probably the way to go.”

Marge Keller is a New York City woman who has graduated from Non-traditional Employment for Women, a program that helps women in that city get into the construction trade.  Along with a new career, she is also a member of IBEW Local 3. Says Keller, the program has “really showed me that I can do a lot of things I didn’t know I could do before. It gave me the chance to earn a lot more money.” She also praises the union as “a good thing” that allows workers in the construction trade “to get good pay and good benefits.”

Mark the date on your calendar: Friday, March 27.

At the Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion, all women trade school students, women in the trades and anyone else who has any interest can participate in hands-on activities and network with recruiters and employers with apprenticeship programs.

Learn more: http://www.wawomenintrades.com/

We’re building a library of links to portraits of women in the skilled trades. Here’s the Michigan Citizen’s portrait of Erin.

Two women’s trade organizations rallied in St. Louis last week to discuss how issues concerning women in trades ought to be included in the political rhetoric today. The organizations, The Missouri Women in Trades and Chicago Women in Trades got together under the rallying cry “Enough about Joe the plumber … how about Pam the painter !” They want to steer the two major presidential candidates back toward key working women’s issues and concerns.

The turnout was strong and adamant about being heard. “I don’t know what the big to do is about Joe,” said Pam Crews, who really is a painter. Carpenter Beth Barton added, “When ‘Joe’s’ used to portray the middle class, it does not represent our nation as a whole. The candidates keep saying now’s the time for change and this is a new nation and a new day, so let’s use that…when will the candidates speak to all of us? If not now, when? If not in this country, where?”

North St. Louis County State Representative Gina Walsh, also a tradeswoman, said the demand for women in trades had the potential for exponential growth. With a hundred at the rally, this showed that there was a unified group with specific concerns. These issues include child care, equal pay and better access to jobs held by men.   

“I want to hear what Senator McCain is going to do for me and my three daughters.  I want to hear what Senator Obama is going to do for me and my three daughters…it would be a groundswell,” said Walsh.  “This is the beginning.  You have to start everything somewhere.”

Phyllis Galimore was a great role model for women in construction and she will be missed.

Read about Phyllis’s life and passing.

Shirley Westeinde is a Canadian  woman who is appealing to women to get trade school training and get a job in the trades.  The Ottawa, Ontario woman has made a career in the trades and she wants to tell other women that they can, too.

“I look at some of the intricacies in the electrical work and the wiring and the thought process that has to go through an electricians mind to make sure that everything is connected correctly,” says Westeinde. “That’s something that women are usually very good at.”

However, women aren’t really moving into the skilled trades in a big way. For a year, she was the Chair of the Candain Construction Association and she used her clout to heavily promote women in the skilled trades. However, “in the end it still doesn’t seem to be an area that is appealing to women.”

She still believes that the creativity and the attention to detail are something that can make construction “women’s work.”

“I think a woman, if anything, has a better opportunity to succeed just because many female characteristics are very germane to what is required in the construction industry. ”

Westeinde is currently chair of the Algonquin College Board of Directors.