JLC Online: Armed with a team of women, Hope Renovations, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, builds and renovates for older adults to age in place while also instilling confidence in women and gender-expansive individuals to pursue construction careers through its pre-apprenticeship program. BUILDER talked with Spencer to learn more about her career in construction as well as the work Hope Renovations is doing.
2 comments:
I love the really nuanced conversation that is delivered in this article. It would be easy to simply blame demographic gaps in the construction industry on men and say it’s just a function of men not giving women opportunities, but this article digs deeper into where the bias comes from and how male allyship is actually present and critical to closing the gap. The root issues are a lack of confidence or even knowing that women and other non-men can have a future in this industry, which is because we often don’t advertise that it is even an option. The perspective that physical labor-heavy careers are relegated to men is a society-wide stereotype, and so combatting that idea falls to all of us and can be achieved from the ground up in how we look at and talk about construction. Like in so many other areas, the solution is support and elevating voices that are not traditionally elevated.
I resonated with a lot of things said in this article about women entering a space controlled by men in a field that lends itself towards being made of men. I think it’s incredibly frustrating to want to learn in a field that is not built for you from people who don’t believe you can do it. I liked that the article mentioned that lack of women mentors discourages other women from wanting to join the construction industry because of the lack of allyship. I think it’s sad when women in a trade have no one to look up to because it makes you feel hopeless and often alone. I remember in highschool that I was so excited when the new physics teacher was a woman because 90% of our whole stem department was run by men and how much confidence it gave me. Sometimes the lack of women role models in certain interests in my career makes me wish I was a man—but upon reflection I shouldn’t wish to be someone else but rather I wish other people would have as much faith in me if I were a man.
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