“I love it,’’ said Hicks, 38, of the Terryville section of Plymouth, who started a year ago as a laborer — assisting carpenters, electricians and other building-tradespeople — after completing a state-funded pre-apprenticeship training.
“I love that it’s like going to the gym,’’ she said. “When you see what you’ve completed, you can look back and say, ‘I did that.’ ”
3 comments:
I mean, I'm definitely glad that are sought out to join this field and finally being given the opportunity to take these positions, but I really dislike the idea that is somewhat perpetuated in this article that women are being given these jobs because they don't have other options. For example, many of the statements quoted in the article, even those made by women, seem to make the assumption that there is only a place for women in this industry because there is a generation of employees retiring and not enough men to replace them. If this is still the idea behind hiring women into technical industries, it almost makes the issue of gender disparities in these fields worse. The ideology that surrounds the presence of women in construction and tech fields needs to keep up with the practice or these supposed advancements in gender equality in the workplace don't really have the significance they appear to.
Similar to Mitchell, I love that women are being hired into the construction workforce, but the apparent reasoning behind it almost cancels out the progression made by hiring women. If the only reason behind more and more women being included in construction is because there aren't enough men to fill in the spots, then there is still an issue to be solved. There's also the point that, yes, more women are being hired in the construction industry, but they aren't hired with field jobs. The women are hired as project managers, marketers, designers, engineers. Now, don't get me wrong, all of the power to the women who run the operation, but for the underlying assumption that women still don't belong in the field actively working on the construction to still be there just shows that, while some work has been done to move forward as a society, there is so much more of the path to go.
I feel like this article takes a step back for women in construction jobs. Rather than celebrating them as equal, they are being treated like they only are getting these jobs because there's no men to take them. Like women are trying to get other jobs and not succeeding because there are not enough jobs out in the industry. In reality, women are getting these jobs because they are what they are passionate ab0ut, and they want to pursue a career as a technical director. Treating women lime second best in the workplace is never okay, but especially when doing technical direction, they should be treated as equals in the field. Nothing is more frustrating than when women are mansplained to in the shop when they know what they are doing. It is so important that women get the respect they deserve in the workplace and the shop should be no exception. there is so much more that needs to be done in society to make it an equal playing field as far as tech.
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