Women plumbers: More distress than progress
New York Times has an article on the difficulties of being a woman in the business of construction. Things sure seem to be changing, but not much better than they historically have been.
One Degree in Fine Arts, and One in Plumbing
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
WHEN Elaine Ward became an apprentice plumber in 1986, the only female plumber most Americans had ever seen was Josephine the Plumber, a character in 1960s and ’70s commercials for Comet cleanser.
But Ms. Ward’s choice of a vocation wasn’t the only thing that made her unusual. After all, how many plumbers of either sex have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree?
Today, Ms. Ward remains anomalous. She is still one of a small number of women who work as plumbers in New York City; one of an even smaller number of women who own plumbing businesses in the city; and, according to the Buildings Department, one of very few women licensed by the city as master plumbers.
That rank, held by about 1,400 plumbers, and achieved in part on the basis of a city-administered written and practical test, exceeds the journeywoman status that Ms. Ward worked under for a decade before starting her company in 2001. For a plumbing contracting business in the city to operate legally, at least 51 percent of it must be owned by one or more licensed master plumbers.
Ms. Ward, 52, is the sole owner of Isis Plumbing Inc. of Long Island City, Queens, which works on small renovation and construction jobs. Isis is often called on by architects and engineers to complete tasks that other plumbers have left unfinished, which happens often enough to give her plenty of work, she said last week. She employs one part-time plumber as needed, she said.Ms. Ward, reaching beyond the world of pipe-bending and cutting tools and soldering torches, chose an imaginative name for a business dealing with the flow of water: Isis was a goddess of ancient Egypt, associated with a myth about the annual flooding of the Nile.
More practically, she also reached out to a women’s business center in Queens, financed partly by the Small Business Administration, for advice on starting her company.
After receiving her degree in 1984 from the University of Minnesota, Ms. Ward, who was raised in Connecticut, did not know how she would use her college major in studio arts, mainly ceramics and glass work, to make a living, she recalled.
She was 30 years old when she graduated, and had a history of low-wage jobs. She thought unionized construction work offered a more promising future, even though it was off the beaten path for a woman, she recounted.
Ms. Ward was living in New York when someone told her that one of several union locals then representing plumbers in the city was giving out apprenticeship applications. She was among three women in a group of more than 60 people admitted to the program, she said, though she does not know how many women applied.
Advocates for construction jobs for women and minorities have said these groups were long excluded from construction unions in high-paying trades like plumbing, in which unionized journeymen in the city earn $45 an hour today. Union and industry leaders say opportunities for women and minorities have grown in recent years.
George W. Reilly, the business manager of Plumbers Local Union 1, which now represents all unionized plumbers in the city, offered numbers to show the change.
Of about 4,600 working members of the local (1,400 are retired), about 50, or 1 percent, are women, he said. But of 363 people currently in the local’s five-year apprenticeship program, 28, or 8 percent, are women. And women make up 12 percent of the 100 people who have entered the apprenticeship program this year.
Local 1 is among the unions participating in a new city program to increase women and minorities in unionized construction jobs.
Ms. Ward recalled the difficulties of pioneering as a woman in construction. On one of her first post-apprenticeship jobs, in 1990, where she recalled being the sole woman out of hundreds of workers erecting a 50-story building in Lower Manhattan, she had to complain for four months to get a separate toilet, she said. She had felt uncomfortable using the same ones as the men, which were in areas where they changed into and out of their work clothes.
Asked if the overall situation for women in construction is better today, she said, “Things are changing a little, but a little goes a long way.”
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Comments
EEOC? Not in my world. I started off in this comapny with such high hopes and asperations. Most of what I wanted I acheived. Towards teh end here I managed global programs, made a ton of moeny for the company. Do you knwo what I got for it?
OUt at an Vendor dinner my co worker, and mentor, asked me "which one of these boys you going to sleep with? If you ahd to choose one who is it? come on it's all in fun"
Well it wasn't fun, it wasn't fun to get the women jokes in email, IM, and to have to sit threough them at EACH meeting. It was NOT fun to be treated like a half wit, becasue I was the only woman. It was and is not fun to be patronized, because I am a woman.
I hate this kcompany now, all I want to do is quit. But the paycheck somes in handy
Posted by: M Hallanan | December 30, 2006 8:04 AM