Repost: Shiu Dusts off 1980 Goal for Women in Trades

By Anna Halkidis

WeNews correspondent
Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Thirty-plus years have passed. Now the director of federal contract compliance for the Department of Labor is focused on getting U.S. women a 7-percent piece of all skilled trade jobs performed, a goal first set in 1980.

Patricia Shiu at a March event in New York City.

Credit: Anna HalkidisNEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--The main attraction at a recent national tradeswomen's gathering here wasPatricia Shiu, a labor department official in a position to help if more women would just tell her office what's going on.

"We have their backs," Shiu said of affected women. "But we need to hear their voices."

Some at the meeting took the cue and spoke up.

Leah Rambo is director of training at the Nicholas Maldarelli Training Center, in Queens, N.Y., which educates sheet metal workers. She told the crowd that contractors have specifically asked her not to send female workers to their site.

Shiu, as director of federal contract compliance for the U.S. Department of Labor, which legally enforces equal employment opportunities for women, said her office is ready to hear from female workers who feel they have suffered discrimination.

Before President Barack Obama appointed her in 2009, Shiu, a lawyer, spent 26 years working on employment discrimination cases for the Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center in San Francisco.

She came to the gathering of tradeswomen and their advocates, held here in late March, ready to show she understood the common problems that women on construction sites say they face: unwanted attention, being monitored more than male counterparts, receiving menial tasks.

"Women suffer all types of repercussions, harassment and discrimination," Shiu said.

And then there's the problem of women getting few of the jobs under federal contract.

Shiu is adamant about doing something about that. Her goal is to increase the current 2.6 percent of women in trade jobs performed under the federal contracting process to 6.9 percent; a figure promised by the Labor Department in 1980, but never accomplished.

To read the full article, visit http://womensenews.org.