• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

 Homepage

100 Years of Votes for Women

  • Home
  • About Us
    • Who We Are
    • Suffrage100MA History
    • Contact Us
    • Annual Reports
    • Work With Us!
  • Partners
    • Becoming a Partner (PDF)
    • Partner Application Form
    • Our Partners
  • Resources
    • Suffrage Centennial Resources
    • The Fight For Women’s Suffrage: Looking Back, Marching Forward! Film
    • The Suffrage Centennial Display Panel Project
    • Did You Know?
      • The Boston Protest of 1919
      • Featured Suffragists
        • Ida B. Wells
        • Alice Paul
        • Sojourner Truth
        • Jeannette Rankin
        • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
      • Silent Sentinels
      • Suffragist or Suffragette?
      • Women’s Rights Quiz
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Save the Date: Gala June 14, 2023
    • Massachusetts & Beyond
    • Virtual Events
    • MA Suffrage Markers
      • Sarah E. Wall Women’s Suffrage Marker in Worcester
      • Remond Family Suffrage Marker Unveiling in Salem
      • Anne L. Page Women’s Suffrage Marker Unveiling
    • Celebrating Women’s Equality Day at the Swan Boats
      • Women’s Equality Day 2022
      • Women’s Equality Day 2021
      • Women’s Equality Day 2019
      • Women’s Equality Day 2018
      • Women’s Equality Day 2017
    • Suffrage Centennial Kickoff Celebration
      • Suffrage Centennial Kickoff Celebration Slideshow
      • Suffrage Centennial Kickoff Invitation
    • Film Screenings
      • The Divine Order
      • Hidden Figures
      • Suffragette
      • Iron Jawed Angels
    • Forums and Presentations
      • I Want to Go to Jail
      • The Equal Rights Amendment, Why Now?
      • The Woman Behind the New Deal
      • Women’s Leadership Forum
      • A Woman’s Place Is at the Top
    • Marches and Rallies
      • Pride Celebrations
      • Tournament of Roses Parade 2020
      • Suffrage100MA Joins Boston Women’s March for America 2017
  • Media
    • In The News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters to Our Community
    • Press Releases
  • Vote
  • Donate
    • Donation History
      • Donation Confirmation
      • Donation Failed
Home » Uncategorized » Boston Globe 1.3.23

Boston Globe 1.3.23

January 3, 2023 By Michelle Juralewicz


A movement is building to get women into construction

By Katie Johnston Globe Staff, The Boston Globe, Updated January 2, 2023, 3:59 p.m.

Sasirin Suriyamongkol is a third-year apprentice in Local 103′s five-year telecommunications program at the Joint Apprentice Training Center. In Massachusetts, more than 10 percent of participants in building trades union apprenticeship programs are women. MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF

At the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the gender of the union’s membership is baked right into its name.

And at IBEW Local 103 in Boston, 95 percent of the workers who retire every year are men. But change is underway. For the past two years, nearly 16 percent of first-year apprentices have been women — a record high — many of them women of color.

In Massachusetts, more than 10 percent of participants in building trades union apprenticeship programs are women, almost triple the national average and the highest rate in the nation, according to the Policy Group on Tradeswomen’s Issues, a local construction industry collaborative. And more than 20 percent of the students in construction programs at vocational technical schools in Massachusetts are women, according to the group.

Nationwide, the number of women in construction jobs has risen by nearly 50 percent in the past decade, and women now make up a record-high 14 percent of the construction workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics survey. Latinas account for much of that growth, according to a Washington Post analysis that found the number of Latina construction workers increased by 117 percent over the past six years.

Currently, the construction workforce in Massachusetts is still overwhelmingly male, but with large numbers of women in the pipeline, and efforts increasing to get women into the trades, their share is expected to keep growing.

The Biden administration recently announced an initiative to get 1 million more women into construction in the next 10 years, which would nearly double the number in the industry at a time when labor shortages abound and major investments in semiconductor manufacturing and high-speed internet access are expected to create 200,000 construction jobs.

Sasirin Suriyamongkol, right, talking to her colleague, Tisha Tanakunsap, at the Joint Apprentice Training Center.MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF

In October, the Greater Boston Building Trades Unions held the first-ever Women Build Boston conference highlighting local efforts to diversify the construction industry. The labor association’s Building Pathways nonprofit — created by former leader and current US Secretary of Labor Martin J. Walsh to recruit more underrepresented groups into construction — hosts Tradeswomen Tuesday events for women interested in construction careers and is working on a pilot program to connect construction workers who start their workdays early with childcare providers willing to open before 6 a.m.

Construction also comes with an added benefit for women. Not only do jobs pay well and have free apprenticeships, it has one of the smallest gender wage gaps of any industry, with women making about 97 percent of what men make, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Across all occupations, women make about 83 cents to every dollar earned by men.

In unions, pay scales are locked in, providing “guaranteed equity,” as Renee Dozier puts it. Dozier, a master electrician who is a business agent for IBEW Local 103, helped build the Encore Boston Harbor casino along with nearly 500 women, thought to be the largest number of women on a construction crew in US history. “It was a beautiful thing,” she said. Sasirin Suriyamongkol is also helping diversify the ranks. Suriyamongkol came to Boston from Thailand in 2015 to improve her English and work as an au pair. She had only intended to stay for a year, but then she met her future husband, an ironworker, who encouraged her to get into the trades. Now a third-year apprentice in Local 103′s five-year telecommunications program, Suriyamongkol is on track to make more than $46 an hour when she becomes a certified technician.

Suriyamongkol, 33, grew up helping her father do the electrical wiring in their house, but her parents didn’t think that type of work was suitable for girls, so she went to college for graphic design instead. Now, however, Suriyamongkol is convinced she’s found her calling. “Doing what I’m doing right now is a dream come true,” she said.

Convincing parents that construction work is right for their daughters can be a tough sell, noted Frank Callahan, president of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council. The council is involved in the Massachusetts Girls in Trades program, which works with vocational schools to introduce girls to the construction industry. Not only do many parents want their children to go to college, he said, those with daughters are concerned about how they’ll be treated in a male-dominated profession. The attitude is often, “I don’t want my daughter going into the construction industry where she’s going to get harassed,” Callahan said.

The men Savy Francis works with have been incredibly supportive, the 39-year-old licensed pipefitter said. Their conversations are more about recipes and grocery stores than “locker room talk,” she said, but she knows tradeswomen who have felt isolated and belittled by male coworkers. When the pandemic hit, Francis, who makes $61.75 an hour working on heating and cooling systems, helped launch the Facebook group Boston Union Trade Sisters to give women a safe space and “another sister to lean on.” The group now has about 800 members.

Teacher Tom Spellman explaining the order of wires in a wiring block to (left to right) Sasirin Suriyamongkol, Tisha Tanakunsap, and Chloe Fay at the Joint Apprentice Training Center. MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF

The effort to get more women into construction goes beyond unions. The Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts started a program last year to expose a more diverse array of high school and vo-tech students to the construction industry. About a quarter of the 200 students who’ve taken job site tours so far were girls, she said.

Women are “severely underrepresented” in the trades as well as in more white-collar jobs in management, marketing, and engineering, said Marion Jones, the commercial construction association’s new — and first-ever — director of workforce development and industry inclusion. There’s even a need for drone pilots to film job sites.

“Construction isn’t just about putting on a hard hat,” she said.

Shannon Connaughton didn’t consider going into the trades when she graduated from Mansfield High School. She went to college to become a teacher and ended up dropping out and becoming a nanny. But when her friends started settling down and buying houses, she realized her under-the-table pay with no benefits wasn’t sustainable.

Her dad, a union carpenter, encouraged her to become a plumber or an electrician. Now Connaughton, 29, who lives in Dorchester, is a second-year electrical apprentice. The biggest obstacle she’s encountered as a woman in the field, she said, has been finding protective gear that fits her 5-foot-3 frame. Most of it is “ginormous,” she said.

Still, Connaughton has been pleasantly surprised by the industry’s growing diversity: “I feel like the trades used to be kind of just white dudes, and now I look around and it’s everybody.”

www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/02/business/movement-is-building-get-women-into-construction/

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Footer

Stay in Touch with Suffrage100MA -
Subscribe to Our Mailing List

Support Suffrage100MA

 

Stay in Touch with Suffrage100MA -
Follow Us!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · Women's Suffrage Celebration Coalition · Site by Tech-Tamer· Log in

Suffragists Support #StopAsianHate

March 2021

Dear Suffrage100MA Community,

Suffrage100MA stands with the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Community and grieves for the eight victims recently murdered in Georgia, six of whom were women of Asian descent.  Carry the victims in your hearts, light candles for them, learn about their lives:  Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Ziaojie Tan, Delaina Yaun and Young Ae Yue.

The words of this song from the 1949 musical “South Pacific” are more applicable than ever:

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” was a highly controversial song, but thankfully, ultimately included in the show. The song was written to address racism against Asians and all people.  The character Lt. Cable, a Caucasian man who has fallen in love with an Asian woman, is distressed by the prejudice against interracial couples and racism in general, sang the song after saying the words “…racism is not born in you! It happens after you’re born…”

James Taylor recorded the song in Nov. 2020.

We must work to end the racism that is “…drummed in your dear little ear…”

In 2020, hate crimes against Asian Americans are up almost 150 percent.  Discrimination against the Asian community has existed in this country since Asians arrived in the late 19th century.  Asians faced discrimination against dignity and equality, and were denied citizenship and the right to vote until the middle of the 20thcentury. After the 19th Amendment was adopted extending the vote to women, discriminatory laws prevented Asian Americans, Native Americans and African Americans from voting for decades and today the crisis for voter accessibility is growing.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “In a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election, and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, legislators have introduced well over four times the number of bills to restrict voting access as compared to roughly this time last year. Thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 restrictive bills this year (as compared to 35 such bills in fifteen states on February 3, 2020).”

Suffrage100MA is committed to increasing accessibility to the ballot and inspiring voters to exercise their right to vote by sharing the history of those who fought bravely, sometimes losing their lives, for decades and across centuries, to secure the vote.  Let us each recognize the power and importance of voting to express one’s voice

On behalf of the Suffrage100MA Board of Directors –
With deep appreciation to all of you for being on this journey with us,

Fredie Kay
Founder & President, Suffrage100MA