Repost: Women are breaking through the 'concrete ceiling'

Great article by CNN Money about the increase in WBEs and tradeswomen, and how there's still much more room to grow female participation in the construction industry. Thank you to Mary Vogel of The Construction Institute for sharing!

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By Deena Shanker @FortuneMagazine May 22, 2013: 8:57 AM ET

NEW YORK (Fortune)

We've all heard about the glass ceiling, but it looks the concrete one might be harder to crack.

According to the National Women's Law Center, in 2010 women held a tiny percentage -- 2.6 -- of the U.S.'s 8.4 million construction jobs, the same percentage they held in 1983. The NWLC faults "barriers such as gender stereotypes, sexual harassment, a lack of awareness about opportunities in construction, and insufficient instruction."

But while women may not be gaining ground in trades like carpentry and plumbing, they are increasingly getting involved on the entrepreneurial side of the industry. The U.S. Census Bureau counted 152,871 women-owned construction firms in 1997. Ten years later, that number had jumped by 76% to 268,809. Women are steadily chiseling away at that concrete ceiling. Or, as Lenore Janis, president of the National Association of Professional Women in Construction, put it, "Our fingernails are broken from scratching at it."

For the past 15 years, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) has compiled its Inner City 100 list, highlighting the fastest-growing urban small businesses in America. This year's list includes 28 women-owned businesses, a double in percentage since 1999, the list's inaugural year. While many of these businesses are taking advantage of the burgeoning "mommy market," several are breaking into industries heavily dominated by men, including construction.

In addition to the efforts of the women themselves, Janis sees the growth as a direct result of a 35-year-old goal set by the Office for Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Since 1978, federal contractors are required to employ women for 6.9% of the total construction work hours on any federal project. (For it's part, the NWLC says that considering the much higher rates of female participation in other typically male dominated fields like policing, butchering, and machine operation, 6.9% is still "not enough.")

Read the remainder of this article at money.cnn.com.

Repost: Women in Male-Dominated Industries - A Toolkit of Strategies

The Australian Human Rights Commission has released a report and toolkit to help recruit and retain women in the mining, utility, and construction industries. The Toolkit can be accessed at https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/women-male-dominated-industries-toolkit-strategies-2013. Read more about the report below.

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The underrepresentation of women in industries considered to be male-dominated – mining, utilities and construction – is an issue that is not only undermining gender equality in Australia, but is having negative effects on industry performance and our economy. The Commission’s Toolkit was been developed to help address this problem.

“This is not merely a report, but an interactive website developed to encourage dialogue, engagement and sharing of approaches about increasing women’s representation in male-dominated industries,” Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick said.

“It encourages employers, employees, government, community, and unions to think about the contribution women can make, and to actively share strategies for attract, recruiting, retaining and developing women in traditionally male-dominated fields.”

In Australia’s general workforce, women represent almost 46% of employees. However, in the industries of construction, mining, and utilities, women account for only around 12%, 15%, and 23% of employees respectively. Recent figures suggest that increasing women’s employment rates could boost Australia’s GDP by 11%.

“Australia ranks fourth in the world in talent shortages and many male-dominated industries are suffering a lack of skilled workers,” Commissioner Broderick said. “Encouraging greater women’s participation in these industries is one solution that could go a long way to addressing these skills shortages.”

The toolkit is broken into the areas of attraction, recruitment, retention and development of women in industries that have traditionally remained dominated by male leadership and employees.

“Users can work through or contribute to discussion in all four areas or any of the four that are most relevant to them,” said Commissioner Broderick.

In developing the Toolkit, the Commission, with the support of the Minister for the Status of Women and FaCHSIA, brought together members of these male dominated industries to gather information on their experience and knowledge.

See the original article at www.humanrights.gov.au.

New and Improved Version of "Finishing the Job"

PGTI is pleased to present version 5.0 of Finishing the Job: Best Practices for a Diverse Workforce in the Construction Industry. This new version includes improved checklists, which place an even greater focus on cooperative relationships between stakeholder groups and documentation of communication related to workforce diversity efforts. We hope that this new version will better assist you in achieving your workforce participation goals. We look forward to your feedback and hope that you will leave a comment below.

Download a PDF version.
Download a Word version.

Repost: Whites Get 92% of Contracts in Post-Affirmative Action L.A.

Thank you to Jeremy Thompson of Economic Justice Research Hub, LLC for sending us this article!

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More than a decade after Los Angeles started trying to sidestep California’s affirmative action ban, firms owned by white men won 92 percent of the $2.1 billion in contracts awarded by the city, though they’re just 14 percent of the population.

A diversity program in place since 2001 has had little impact because it’s rarely enforced, according to critics and city officials. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, elected in 2005, has called it “absolutely insufficient.” A compliance scorecard for 2012 detailed how the second-most populous U.S. city fell short of its own goals for bringing female and minority contractors to 22 percent.

Los Angeles started its outreach program in 2001,
four years before Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa,
a Democrat and the first Hispanic mayor since 1872,
took office. Photographer: Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg

The struggle to shake up the status quo in Los Angeles -- which has the second-highest share of minority residents of the 10 largest cities, at about 71 percent -- underscores the power of prohibitions against preferences for women and traditional minority groups.

With 1996’s Proposition 209, California became the first state to outlaw gender and race preferences, inspiring bans in Washington, Michigan, Nebraska and Arizona. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering Michigan’s law in a college case that may affect state prohibitions against factoring in race and ethnicity in hiring, contracting and university admissions.

In Los Angeles, the city hasn’t been aggressive enough in finding ways around state law, said Tim Lohrentz, who has studied contracting for the Insight Center for Community Economic Development in Oakland, California.

‘Really Varied’

While “Los Angeles has in some ways a really innovative policy,” Lohrentz said, “at the implementation level, it’s really varied and not very well done.”

There is no national census of contractors broken down by race, ethnicity or gender, according to the National Association of Minority Contractors.

The city requires agencies to set diversity goals and their main contractors to document good-faith efforts to reach out to nonwhite, non-male subcontractors.

“We laughingly call it the ‘good-fake’ effort,” said Beverly Kuykendall, an African-American who owns a consulting business and is on the board of the Southern California chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors.

Los Angeles has to force the hands of companies that win the biggest jobs, Kuykendall said. “Only if there’s a pain point will some of these prime contractors make an effort.”

About 100 miles to the south, San Diego, with a non-Hispanic white population of 45 percent, has achieved results by mandating that a certain amount of contract work go to small businesses. The system has pulled in women and minorities without creating a bureaucracy that targets them directly. Lohrentz called it “very simple” and easy to police.

To give the Los Angeles program some teeth, Villaraigosa in January opened a $400,000-a-year Office of Contractor Relations. The outreach program had operated until then without a city agency designated to manage and enforce it.

Read the remainder of this article at www.bloomberg.com.

Repost: Why the Person Building Your Next House Might Just Be a Woman

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

Despite harassment and bias, women are fighting for jobs in skilled trade.

The world of work for women is changing. A popular new Barbie construction set -- yes, building pink mansions! -- may help girls expand their view of what occupations are open to them, and that's welcome. But tradeswomen are taking action today: President Obama will soon be hearing from women electricians, plumbers, ironworkers, and carpenters about what it takes to succeed in the world of skilled trades work.

In April over 650 tradeswomen gathered in Sacramento, California, for the “Annual Women Build California and the Nation Conference.” Iron workers and plumbers met with carpenters, electricians, and laborers. They cheered women leaders like Liz Shuler, Secretary Treasurer of the AFL-CIO; the first woman and the youngest person ever elected to that position. The women listened to Ed Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who called for equal treatment on the job site and in the union hall. Cement mason Alise Martiny, business manager of the Greater Kansas City Building Trades Council, offered her story of women’s leadership. These women are “leaning in" in ways Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg might not imagine. For one weekend tradeswomen from all over the country shared their stories and learned from each other. Most return to worksites where they are the only woman. The isolation of their day-to-day work lives is in stark contrast to the gathering.

Some of these women are brand new apprentices, others are seasoned journey-level workers, the most skilled in their trade. Some have become apprenticeship directors and union officers. These are women who work alongside men to build our houses and hospitals, our bridges and roads, to connect our power lines and solar panels. They work with their hands and their heads. The jobs are demanding, rewarding, and often dangerous.

But why are there still so few tradeswomen? What can be done to make these highly skilled, good paying jobs available to more women?

Thirty-five years ago, President Jimmy Carter expanded Executive Order 11246 to prohibit sex discrimination in employment by government contractors. He established goals and timetables and outlined ways to reach out to recruit and train women for all jobs. An early goal was for women to be 6.9 percent of the workforce on federally funded construction projects.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs was established to oversee the enforcement process within the Department of Labor. There was active outreach, training, and oversight. Women began to enter apprenticeship programs. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 the enforcement effort slowed to a crawl from which it has never recovered. The OFCCP has half the staff today that it had in 1978.

Women have shown that they are interested in this work and fully capable of performing the most difficult and dangerous tasks. Many have overcome hostile supervisors and co-workers, sexual harassment, and isolation. There have been grievances, complaints, law suits, and consent decrees. Many have also found male mentors, good job training programs, and support. Their stories have been documented most recently in books like Jane LaTour’s Sisters in the Brotherhoods.

According to author and tradeswoman Susan Eisenberg, however, for the few women who get into the trades it is still not uncommon to hear stories of inadequate training, biased evaluations, unsafe assignments, and sexual assaults. Thirty-five years after the Executive Order demanded affirmative action and almost 50 years after Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in employment based on sex, women remain pioneers on construction sites.

Today only 2.5 percent of trades jobs are held by women. According to thelatest reports of the U.S. Department of Labor, while women are almost one-third of doctors and lawyers and over 14 percent of our armed forces, they remain barely 1.6 percent of carpenters, 1.8 percent of electricians, and 1.3 percent of operating engineers. The numbers are worse for women of color.

Read the remainder of this article at alternet.org.

Repost: The data behind the city’s boost in MWBE contracting goals

An extremely data-rich May 8, 2013 article about Houston, TX, raising their W/MBE goal from 22% to 34%.

Interestingly, they removed the WBE goal after a 2009 lawsuit. The lawsuit required a disparity study, which they have now done, and the city has now re-included WBEs in their goal. Even more interestingly, after the WBE goals were dropped in 2009, the use of WBEs was cut in half. No such drop was found in MBEs. More evidence that goals matter.

Workforce participation goals are not address in this article.

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Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Houston City Council on Wednesday unanimously passed changes to the city’s affirmative action program, increasing small, minority- and women-owned businesses target share of construction work from 22 percent to 34 percent, and adding women back to the program (they’d been removed in a 2009 lawsuit settlement).

Here is today’s story for more background, and here is a story explaining the 2009 settlement. There are three items we didn’t have space for in the story that are worth noting here.

First, some numbers. Those around the council table praised the goal increase as a big deal today, but Houston already exceeded that goal, reaching 34.4 percent in fiscal year 2011, when the stated goal for construction was still 22 percent. The city also reached 32.4 percent participation last fiscal year.

Mayor Annise Parker has said repeatedly that small and minority firms were awarded more work during the last fiscal year (FY2012, which ended last June) than ever before. It turns out that’s not only true in construction work ($229 million) but overall ($340 million) and as an overall percentage of total work performed (25.7 percent). This is true at least back to 2005, the oldest year for which I have data. (Click here for a spreadsheet showing all the data.)

Also worth mentioning: Of the $229 million awarded in FY2012, certified firms were prime contractors for $105.8 million, or 46 percent, of the work, and were subcontractors on $123 million, or 54 percent, of the work. The substantial prime contracting share proves the program does not impede competition, said Carlecia Wright, director of the city’s Office of Business Opportunity, adding that subcontractors also must be qualified.

Second, the disparity study. The 2009 lawsuit settlement required a disparity study of city contracting to determine whether the city was justified in including women. After analyzing $2.82 billion in contracts over more than five years, the study showed that Hispanic and Native American business owners were receiving a parity of work but that firms owned by blacks, Asians and women were underrepresented (and that women’s share of city construction business was cut in half following the 2009 settlement). See slides 3-5 of this presentation, they’re really interesting.

After the City Council vote today, Women Contractors Association president Lenora Sorola-Pohlman said it was unfortunate her members had to wait five years to reenter the program.

“We’re happy women are back on the program. We’ll flourish like we did before,” she said. “Hopefully we don’t flourish so well they remove us again. It was only because of the goal they were hiring us. I was happy to see it was a unanimous vote, which doesn’t happen very often.”

View the original article at http://blog.chron.com/houstonpolitics.

Repost: Women building careers in construction

Julie Palmer, president of Charlie Allen Restorations, at a condo remodeling project in Cambridge.

When Julie Palmer answered a classified ad for an office manager at Cambridge-based Charlie Allen Restorations in 1999, her management experience was in accounting, not kitchen and bathroom renovations.

But she managed transportation for a book distribution company prior to joining Charlie Allen, so the male-dominated setting didn’t faze her. It’s not unusual for her to be the only female on the job site except possibly for the homeowner, she said.

In February, Palmer was promoted to president of the company, one of only a handful of Boston women who hold leadership positions in the building and renovations industry. For some, this gender divide starts in childhood.

“They’re not always teaching girls how to hammer nails,” said Palmer, who oversees Charlie Allen’s projects that have included the restoration of period homes and several churches.

Palmer is among a few women who have chosen a career in construction, according to the National Association of Women in Construction. Of the 9 million trade workers in the U.S., only about 830,000 or 9 percent are women. The number of females in construction peaked in 2006 at 1.1 million. Gerry-Lynn Darcy, executive officer at the Builders and Remodelers Association of Greater Boston, said she doesn’t have local numbers, but anecdotal evidence suggests women in the industry are on the rise. The national trade group noted that the number of women increased by 2.6 percent in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available.

Allison Quinn Guido, general manager at Hanover-based Almar Building & Remodeling, is a notable exception to the stereotype of girls not using a hammer. Almar is a family business, and Guido’s parents built their house in Hanson when Guido was 10. “The smell of cut wood has always stayed with me,” she said.

While studying theater arts management at West Virginia Wesleyan College, Guido spent summers supervising vinyl-siding crews. After graduating college in 2002, she had planned to work at the family business for a year or two while job hunting. But she liked the work, stayed on and now runs it as a 50/50 partnership with her father, Terry Quinn.

Guido acknowledged the physical challenges. “There are some things that are much more difficult for me as a 5-foot, 2-inch woman as opposed to a 6-foot-tall contractor,” she said

But some clients who don’t want her advice at the beginning of a project wind up asking for her by the end, because she sees the potential in their vision and doesn’t belittle their ideas, she added.

Like Guido, Allison Iantosca studied theater in college and entered the industry through a family business. Iantosca joined her father at Hopkinton-based F.H. Perry Builder Inc. in 2000, initially accompanying clients to showrooms and helping them select materials for home improvement projects. She’s now a partner and works on business development, marketing and strategic planning.

Iantosca sees an increasing number of women getting involved in all levels of building and renovation, thanks, in part, to the focus on craftsmanship at places like the North Bennet Street School in Boston’s North End. “Just about all the companies that I know that we compete with have women involved,” she said.

Women with strong management skills bring valuable insight to the construction site, Palmer said. “We tend to look at a project as more than construction, we approach it as a relationship,” she said. “I also think that without the construction background, it can be easier to understand what a client wants, because I’m not always thinking of the constructability first, but the clients’ wants and needs.”

Article from the Boston Business Journal. View the original at www.bizjournals.com.

Repost: Women on the Rise

Please enjoy this wonderful video about women in construction, created by Hard Hatted Women in Cleveland. The video could be a useful tool for outreach efforts: Thanks to retired Cleveland carpenter sister Rocky Hwasta for sharing it!