www.hudsonscenic.com: To celebrate Women’s History Month, HUDSON is shining a spotlight on some of the incredible women that call Hudson Scenic Studio home. Today we are spotlighting three women from our Carpentry and Metal Shops: Donna Golden, Emma Greene, and Whitney McDermott. We sat down and chatted with them about their work at Hudson, favorite projects, and what it is like to work as a woman in a male-dominated industry.
2 comments:
It was really interesting to read the perspectives of these three women who all had somewhat different paths to arrive at their current positions. As a woman who is very interested in doing work like each of these women have described, it was awesome to read about their experiences and also their advice. Carpentry, welding, rigging, and similar areas seem to still be pretty dominated by men, and it can feel intimidating as a woman to carve a path into that world. Oftentimes one of the biggest issues is definitely implicit bias, because even though the men you work with may respect you plenty, there will still be unconscious bias that can impact your workplace. It is good to hear the opinions of these three women who have found a great, welcoming place to work at Hudson, and it definitely is awesome how excited they each are about the jobs they get to do.
This is literally my dream. I declared Technical Direction at the end of last semester. I love being in the scene shop and working with my hands. Similarly to Whitney McDermott, I started theater in my high school freshman year. I was in the orchestra but never felt like I really clicked there. My high school technical director was the one who told me I could make a career out of this. Both the technical director and director are amazing, strong women (the director was a black woman like me) who pushed me to my limits to get me to where I am today. They always made sure to remind me that as a woman going into a male-dominated field, I will have to work twice as hard. Women are not always seen as the strongest in the room. When you think of a carpenter, your mind never automatically pictures a woman. I look up to those two women and will be forever grateful to them. I hope to one day be able to do the same thing for young women and girls. I want to be able to show young girls that they can go into any field regardless of whether or not it’s a “man’s job.” Hopefully, we can get to a point in society where there are no male or female-dominated industries. At the moment, I don’t see that happening in the near future, so for the time being, I will continue to look up to the amazing women who came before me and work to inspire those that follow.
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