This is a great article I found in the home section of the Post. I have only known one friend who has worked full time in a cabinet shop. She cut drawer parts and made face frames for a well respected kitchen cabinet company for many years. Although in a time clock environment, well supervised, she loved the different runs of custome woods at the cost of a restricted work place.
How ,many of you out there have worked with us ladies or presently work with a female in woodworking? How do you gauge their skills if you do?
Dryad
Women’s Work On the Job, From Framing to Finishing Version By Doug Brown Special to The Washington Post Thursday, May 1, 2003; Page H01 Amy Cusimano stalked the plywood floors of the unfinished house in her duck boots and blue jeans, a chirpy two-way radio clipped to her belt, a clipboard in her hands. She had long, curly hair, scarlet-painted nails and eye shadow. “I have a truck full of tools,” she said, standing over a clutter of nails and sawdust, pizza boxes and plastic Mountain Dew bottles. “And I know how to use them.” It was cold and sodden and windy, a morning of slapping windshield wipers and gas-station coffee. Ryland Homes was piecing together 30 big houses in what not long ago had been a horizon of Baltimore County farmland, and Cusimano, 31, was a boss on the project. It was her job to tell the knots of gruff guys where to nail the crown molding and where the walls are bowed. She ordered workmen with boards on their shoulders and tools on their belts to do jobs all over again because they weren’t done right the first time. She was the only woman around. Women now commonly work as soldiers, cops and firefighters. But carpenters? It’s rare. Women made up just 1.7 percent of the carpenters in the country in 2001, according to a study published by the National Association of Home Builders. In the building trades in general — such as painting, paving, roofing, electrical work and masonry — women held about 2.45 percent of the jobs that year. Those numbers haven’t changed much during the past 20 years. But the macho world of the trades is poised for a change, said Colleen Muldoon, a union bricklayer who is active in shepherding women into trades. Women have long tried to enter various trades, but few stick with it. Male workers, Muldoon said, have historically had bad attitudes about women working in the trades. The scarcity of women on job sites adds to the problem, she said: Not only are women treated poorly by men, but they have nobody to commiserate with while on the job. As a result, women often give carpentry or bricklaying or plumbing a whirl for awhile, then drop out. But now the country has “reached a pivotal point in terms of changing those attitudes with men,” said Muldoon, now education programs coordinator for the International Masonry Institute, the training arm of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers in Washington. Women working in the trades around the country have been organizing around this issue for the past several years, and large international unions are making an effort to draw more women toward the trades. An organization called Tradeswomen Now and Tomorrow, which is a coalition of women’s trade groups around the country, is holding its second annual conference in Washington during the first week in June (www.tradeswomennow.org). The organization, which Muldoon describes as an assembly of “modern-day suffragettes,” plans to lobby Capitol Hill to address issues that would bring more women into the trades, such as increased funding for vocational education programs. A carpenters union, she said, is holding a reception for the 200 women expected to show up for the conference. Some states, including Maine, New York and Illinois, have particularly strong organizations representing women in the trades. The Washington area doesn’t yet support a group, Muldoon said. But between Baltimore and Northern Virginia, there are builders and landscapers, painters and at least one self-described “female version of a handyman” who spend their days lugging around tools, grinding dirt into their clothes and punishing their muscles. “Getting divorced and needing a job” is how, four years ago, Cusimano entered a world where in a typical day she deals entirely with men. “I saw an ad that said, “Trim carpenters, no experience necessary, tools required,’ ” said Cusimano, a single-mom for whom woodworking has long been a hobby. “Well, I had the tools, so I called the guy. I called him over and over again. I was just persistent.” The guy relented and gave her a job, shoulder-to-shoulder with the hammer-swinging men. Her foreman was fond of telling her: “I don’t think a girl can do this job.” She says she took a lot of abuse. If a guy were subjected to the same kind of bullying, she said, he’d probably retort with a blitzkrieg of expletives. But Cusimano grew up in Kansas weeding gardens, shucking corn and handling farm animals. She does not curse. “Me, I cry,” she said. “I’m a girl.” She went from her first employer to Ryland, and then she moved up fast, from common grunt to supervisor. She credits a willingness to work, diplomatic dexterity and clean language for her quick rise. And now she knows how to build a house. She waltzes through a Home Depot and it all makes sense. On weekends and at night, she does custom jobs for homeowners who want a closet built in a basement or new windows installed. She makes more than triple the minimum wage with Ryland and can earn $300 a day moonlighting. “I like working outdoors, and I love the weather,” said Cusimano, who worked as a secretary and was in the Army before turning to carpentry. “Yeah, it gets hot or cold, but it’s better than sitting in a stuffy office.” For a few days recently, Ginette Heroux’s office was a jumble of tiles and dust and tools, her chair the rim of a bathtub, in a small North Arlington house. Heroux, 55, the self-described female handyman, was putting in a client’s new bathroom, from floor to fixtures. Heroux had ripped out all of the old beige and black tiles from the bathroom walls and floor, changed the plumbing, and was in the midst of fixing new white and blue tiles to the walls and larger slate tiles on the floor. Her big tile-cutting machine sat on a tarp in the bathtub. A screwdriver jutted from her back pocket. She talked as she worked, in a voice touched by the Ohio of her adolescence. Twelve years ago, she said, she gladly gave up the “party pumps and pantyhose” of a job in banking and entered trade school in Boston to learn carpentry. After moving to Arlington six years ago, she’s been building cabinets and bookcases and doing general home repair and improvement. “It’s difficult,” she said. “It’s strenuous. The desire has to be deep, and the body has to be strong.” Heroux said she hasn’t had any problems dealing with men or other customers who are skeptical of her abilities. In fact, she said, her gender is often a bonus. Some clients seek her out because “women want to hire women,” she said: “Some women feel more comfortable having women working in their homes.” She owns every style of tool, she said, except for a lathe, a machine that holds wood or metal and turns the object against something sharp. But she owns about 10 different routers, tools used to cut grooves in wood. “I think I’m a router fiend,” she said. And she is content with her choice of profession. “I’m not getting rich,” she said. “I’m just happy.”
Replies
When I was shop foreman at a steel fabrication company in Taft, CA, in charge of all the hiring and firing, I hired a female pipefitter/layout person. Great gal, worked hard, last I heard she had moved up to rig welding full time in the oilfields. She had an impressive resume. All that being said, I understand the reluctance some guys in the building trades have about hiring women. I was a little reluctant myself, and I'll tell you why.
Welders and oilfield workers (and, I suspect, guys in most of the residential building trades) have habits developed over many years of working. We spit. Most of us smoke (at least in my shop). We don't use tissues, we just hold our thumb over one nostril and expel the snot. And we have a certain way of talking. If a flange two-holes perfectly level on a joint of tubing, it's "on the nuts". If it's out by a tiny bit, it's "off by a c--- hair". These guys have been talking this way at work for twenty years. They're not going to change. Now, I can send them to all the sensitivity training classes I want to. They may try to change. But realistically, it's not going to happen.
So you get a gal walking through the shop on her way to her station. She hears a fitter and a tack welder arguing while fitting up channels for a skid. "Tap it to the right, it's off by a c--- hair!" "F--- you, it's on the nuts!" And the next day I'm subpoenad to testify in a sexual harassment lawsuit that costs my boss a pile of money to settle, and I've got to fire my two best welders. That's the risk you run when you hire a woman. She might not even have a problem with the language; she might just be looking for an easy payday. Fortunately I could tell that the woman I hired was both thick-skinned and honest.
I think I can shed some light on why the ladies haven't taken up the mason trade or perhaps I should say " why there were no ladies on the line when I was a practising mason". I started the mason trade in 1948, back when the jobsites were a bit cruder than you'll find today. That was in the days before steel pipe scaffolding and porta-poties. The scaffolding was wooden on a low rise bldg. or if the bldg. was a steel frame high rise, the brickies worked off a swing scaffold hung from the steel frame work. Toliet facilities were practically non-existent. You got on the scaffold in the morning and were there untill lunch time. If you had to "go" that was the time because you were on the scaffold all afternoon untill quiting time. If you got caught short, you just turned around and let fly over the mortar board and the hell with anyone underneath. If something more serious overtook you and you absoulutely had to leave the scaffolding and climb down to the ground to relieve yourself, your buddies working on either side of you had to take up the slack until you got back. Once in a while a female would approach us and ask if she could give it a try. Could she be a bricklayer. Sure honey,if you can pass the test. What test, she would ask. We'd point up to the scaffold and explain about the lack of toliet facilities and tell her that if she got caught short and had to pee, she would have to squirt over a mortar board 11 courses high. Now and then one would go for the "test", but none ever passed. There was a tall lanky blonde one day that nearly cleared the board, but we flunked her. We just couldn't take the chance of her peeing on a mortar board.
Those old time brickies were a nasty bunch anyway. There used to be a saying that "when the old prostitue died, she wanted to be buried underneath the bricklayers scaffolding, because if they weren't doing it, they were talking about it". And we had that c... hair measurement also, except more refined than the steelworkers. If something was really out of plumb/level, it was a black c... hair off (coarse), little bit off,blonde c...hair, hardly worth mentioning,one of those really fine red c...hairs.
That's the way it was in the old days. I supose that all changed with the advent of steel scaffolding,porta-potties,OSHA, womens rights,sexual harrassment etc. etc. etc. Ah! for the good old days. Ken
been a finish carpenter/cabinet installer for 15 years and have had a couple of women working for me
never had a problem, they expect gross humour, sexist jokes etc
big thing i noticed? they were much more consciencious and reliable then most young guys
on my crew, i have two tradesman, and two helpers, one male one female
the guy is done next week, irresponsible and sloppy
the woman? capable, willing to listen and learn, she a big asset to my business
Hi,
I must admit that I didn't bother reading the 'wall of words', but have the general gist of what you're trying to say.
I'm a former engineer from heavy industry. The language that the others are referring to is commonplace, but the men are still polite and have families at home, so if there were women around, conversation switched to 'home' language, out of respect. Those that didn't change were either taken to task or ostracised by their workmates. Some things are acceptable this day and age and others still are not.
Female engineers are judged by their peers on their professional ability, I must say, and no sexism comes into it in, in my experience. You can either do the job or not.
In fact, a lot of the best plant operators are female also. They tend to take more care of machines and equipment (eg: how many men vs women would be involved in 'forklift races' late at night), think things through and are more used to trying to juggle ten things at once.***
So, no, I don't have a problem working with women. At the last plant I was at, 120 others didn't also. They ladies on the plant were treated with the same respect as anyone else, and both not put on a pedestal or denegrated, just treated as equals.
Cheers,
eddie
edit*** not generalising here, relaying the results of several studies reported about 4 years ago here, funded by the employer organisations, Sorry, can't give links to specifics.
pps: Just got out a dictionary to remind myself what a dryad was. Ha ha
Edited 5/2/2003 7:46:58 PM ET by eddie (aust)
Thanks eddie(aust), fitting for myself so my friends say.
I would be offended if the language was consistently raunchy and disrespectful day in and day out. Guys seem to deflect it better imho and it actually seems to relieve job stress keeping the mood light and jovial. Ihave seen my brothers chew each other out worst then anything in a bad street movie. The next day they are buddy, buddy and closer then ever before and all is forgotten.
With all the sexual harassment issues out there I can see why companies are very careful in selecting women for the position. Chewing tobacco, cussing, and flagellating are not against the law and in themselves' separately can be hilarious at the right time but a constant environment wouldn't be for me to tell you the truth. That doesn't make you a bad person or say your bad at what you do as far as I see it either, just not for me. I much prefer the colorful and cheery workplace with soft rock, nicely lighted and good air booth for painting my wooden crafts. http://www.craftsitedirectory.com/woodworking5.html Here is a web link worth checking out. and Thanks for the honest answers guys and encourage rather then discourage your laddie tradeswomen out there.
Dryad
Women woodworkers, Dryad? Not a big deal in my experience. Been teaching them and working with them for the last twenty five or more years. Just like every other woodworker, some are crap, and some are good, and most are in between. What else is there to know? Woodworkers are just woodworkers, and the cream nearly always rises to the top. Slainte.
Website The poster formerly known as Sgian Dubh.
Edited 5/3/2003 2:36:43 PM ET by RichardJ
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