'Good ol' boys' Start to Talk the Talk in Support of Women
A man gives a female engineer a helium balloon in honor of Secretarys Day. A supervising journeyman pushes a female apprentice plumber down the stairs. Insult and injury. The experience of women who have charged into the "good ol boys" universe of construction in the last quarter century often is still worlds apart, depending on the color of their "collars."
Typically, tradeswomen have sustained insult, injury and indignity way beyond female design and construction professionals. Most incidents are blatant, including sexual harassment, discrimination and isolation (ENR 9/7/98 p. 26). One thing less blatant is the progress made by women in the trades. They make up only 2.4% of a work force of about 10 million; up from less than 1% in 1978; women account for about 10% of all constructions professions, up from 6.1% in 1983.