ST LOUIS GROUP SEEKS TO GET MORE WOMEN INTO THE CONSTRUCTION TRADES

from the ST LOUIS POST-DISPATCH:

Group seeks to get more women into construction trades

By Riddhi Trivedi-St. Clair

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

03/07/2008

Mekole Fleming, of St. John, practices welding at the Plumbers & Pipefitters Training Facility. She is a member of the group Missouri Women in Trade and is working on receiving her welding certification. (Sarah Conard/Special to the Post-Dispatch)

For almost 25 years, Pamela Crews has been among the small group of women who work in the construction trades.

“It’s like being a male nurse where you are surrounded by hundreds of women. It’s intimidating,” said Crews, 42, who became a wallpaper hanger in the mid-1980s. “Being part of the minority all these years, I have always felt there should be more women in the construction industry.”

Now Crews has teamed up with other women in construction trades such as carpentry, welding, painting and wallpaper hanging to start a local organization that she hopes will provide mentors to young women.

“I had no one to talk to, to compare my day, my life, my situation with, ever,” Crews said. “I want young women to know they don’t have to have a master’s degree or work five jobs to raise their children.”

Missouri Women in Trades officially incorporated last month. Teresa Willis, another driving force behind the group, is the director. Willis has worked for women’s rights most of her life, and spent 12 years as development director of a shelter for battered women.

About two years ago, she heard about a Chicago area group that helped women enter construction trades. It made her think about starting a similar local organization.

“A lot of women enjoy being in non-traditional professions like construction, but often they don’t know their options,” Willis said. “And they are not encouraged to go into those areas.”

Based on statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, Willis said, a majority of women are segregated in about 20 out of 500 major occupations in the economy. Only three or four out of those 20, she said, pay enough to support a family.

Construction pays well, and yet there are not many women in it, she said.

“I always felt there should be more women in construction,” Crews said. “But a lot of women find construction a tough industry to be in.”

Construction hasn’t been a women-friendly workplace, Willis said.

“The guys aren’t openly hostile, but they have been doing things in one way for so long, they don’t know how to deal with women on a site,” Willis said.

The organization wants to help female — and male — construction workers learn how to deal with gender differences, she said. It also is trying to help women new to construction navigate their way through the industry.

After starting as an informal group in September 2006, the group has grown and will be a chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction.

One member, Mekole Fleming, a 34-year-old pipefitter and welder, doesn’t have many fond memories of her apprenticeship in 1994. She only knew of three other women welders.

“It was absolutely terrifying. This was a male-dominated trade, and I was one of a few getting ready to occupy it,” Fleming said.

She often felt like the industry was not ready to accept women. Even finding work attire was difficult. The uniforms and helmets were all fitted for men and there were no special ones for women workers.

“I wish I had a local organization I could have gone to and talked to other women who were like me,” Fleming said.

Even today, fewer than 10 percent of the more than 2,000 active members of the local pipe­fitters union are women. One reason, said Beth Barton, 28, is gender stereotypes.

As a young woman whose parents were in health-related fields, she said, she was expected to keep up the tradition and enrolled in pre-nursing. She didn’t find it engaging.

Then, Barton said, she got pregnant. Her $7-per-hour pay as a certified nursing assistant wasn’t enough to support herself and her baby.

“So I made up my mind to become a carpenter,” Barton said. “I opened the phone book and started calling every single contractor in the book. Most people laughed at me and hung up.”

They didn’t think construction was the right field for a young woman looking for a job, she said.

Finally someone at BSI Constructors directed her to the Carpenters Union and its apprenticeship program.

As an apprentice, she was making $13.53 an hour and had health and dental benefits, she said.

Whether she is accepted at a job site, Barton said, “varies from contractor to contractor.”

Some of the men cuss and then apologize to her and think they’re being chivalrous, she said.

“The true problem is men and women in construction just don’t know how to handle working together,” Barton said. The men tend to either go overboard trying to be polite, she said, or don’t acknowledge any difference between them and the women.

The women either try too hard to fit in or spend most of their time alone.

Missouri Women in Trades hopes to remedy the issues by raising awareness of the trades, along with offering training and other assistance to women as well as construction companies and unions, Barton said.

The organization held its first networking event and career fair at the Construction Careers Center — a high school for young people considering a career in construction — in St. Louis this week in conjunction with National Women in Construction Week.

Female high school students were able to meet other women in construction trades and learn about options available to them in the industry.

“We want other young women who may not think of construction as a career to do so,” Barton said. “Women make up half the (overall) community after all, why not in construction?”

rtstclair@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8206