Apprenticeships have been hotbeds of harassment and discrimination

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The work on the Seattle-light rail platform was her last job as an apprentice sheet metal worker, and Vanessa Carman was relieved. She has been able to obtain the status of a female traveller and the higher remuneration and better treatment she can usually provide for at least a year-at least for men, in fact all of her colleagues are men.

Carman is a burly figure, 5'8 inches tall, with a crow in hair, and has been treated unfairly since entering the building. After her first job as an apprentice, she was called the "rookie princess" after the sealant she used to seal the winding pipes on the ceiling of the workplace south of Seattle. Sometimes, her foreman stood by the ladder for hours and handed him the screws. Her next job was in a 30-story apartment building in nearby Bellevue. Her male colleague cut the padlock into thin slices, destroying the place’s female-only potty. When they ascended on an aerial work platform known as a scissor lift, people beat her, yelled at her, fumbled her, and pushed her groin towards her. She tortured her way of working for nothing, hoping that as a female traveler, things will become easier. 

Then came the work of the University of Washington on the light rail platform. It was 2012 and construction work has not yet rebounded from the recession. Kaman has been unemployed for several months. The project is to install decorative panels on the new railway platform. These panels were designed in the architect's shop and are characterized by blue floral bodies inspired by the various geology of the area. However, these people are responsible for the installation. Kaman was assigned a low-skill task with sandpaper covering the sides of the escalator.

At work, Kaman established a friendship with a male colleague. They talked about the safety topics she insisted on at work: children, cooking, keeping pets. She bought a birthday present for her colleague, a gift card for a coffee shop, and also gave his son a bicycle rack that had run out of bicycles. In most afternoons after the end of the working day, they took a shuttle bus from the work place to the parking lot to catch up with their working day. But one afternoon, Kaman missed the shuttle bus, so she walked about a mile past the tall glass and steel building on the University of Washington campus. Halfway through, she heard the piercing screams of the bicycle and stopped, feeling someone grabbing her hips from behind. She thought it was a colleague of a friend. When she realized what had happened, he peddled it.

"I still don't think the voice of representing women in the blue-collar industry has arrived."

These waitresses told her stories about women who complained about dirty jokes or flirted too much (or not enough). She worries about what it means for male colleagues to tell other women not to be that woman. But she was very angry. The next day, she told her colleagues what had happened. He notified the supervisor. She said that soon, a company boss showed up at the job site and ordered Kaman to huddle with her colleagues. She recalled: "I don't want to fire any of you." "Comb it out." When they started to burst into tears, Kaman lowered his head and closed his eyes. "Suddenly, are you threatening me to be fired?" she thought, but she was too scared to speak.

The next day, Friday, after working four days a week, most of the crew returned home. The waitress who fumbled her was the acting foreman. Kaman appeared to work in the light rain. When she waited for the elevator to transport it to the underground, she called for the elevator, and her colleague came over. She recalled: "There is no job for you." "Go home." At almost 7 in the morning, rainwater seeped into the insulated work clothes under the jacket. She drove home and set up the company's headquarters in another city. She recalled that the shop owner apologized and promised to pay for the day and take action. But on Monday, her colleague was still there.

The next day, he was there the next day. One afternoon that week, Kaman returned to the work trailer from lunch and found her tool bag was covered with saliva. One or two days later, she found that the contents of the bag had been emptied and the tools had been thrown at the work site. She talked to a friend of the union, and she told her that she could file a complaint, but the union would represent her and her male colleagues, and what happened would spread. By this time, her apprenticeship was only one year before she completed and traveled abroad. She thinks she has two choices: keep quiet or end her career. (An official of the company was asked to comment on Kaman’s experience. He said he disagreed with Kaman’s description of the facts, but declined to provide specific details. "We welcome and encourage women to join the industry and make every effort to ensure they receive Treatment. Equally and with the utmost respect," he wrote in an email.

"When you are an apprentice, you don't want to shake the boat," Kaman, 43, told me when we spoke for the first time. "When someone grabs your ass, you don't say anything, when someone spit on your tool, you don't say anything, you don't say anything."

The apprenticeship is almost as long as the job itself, but in recent years, policymakers on both sides of the aisle have begun to accept them as an alternative to four-year universities. When Tom Perez was former President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Labor,

"Another university-no debt." The administration of former President Donald Trump also promoted apprenticeship. Labor specialists who require large-scale retraining of workers displaced by the coronavirus

Apprenticeship is a solution. These plans are usually carried out by a partnership between the union and the contractor, providing workers with free classroom training and on-the-job guidance as they gradually increase their wages. But in fields that are generally considered female jobs (such as early childhood education,

. Historically, only in male-dominated fields such as architecture can apprentices provide a real gateway to the middle class. For women, these training programs are usually in a hostile and even dangerous environment.

Man composition

And almost all leaders tend to view women as intruders, often depriving them of equal training and job opportunities. "Every woman faces discrimination; if not, she will." Former electrician Meg Vasey told me that he is now the operator of Tradeswomen Inc., a non-profit organization in Oakland, California. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made gender discrimination in the workplace illegal, and before and after the regulations of the U.S. Department of Labor were enacted, Vathy began to get involved in this industry in the late 1970s.

Gender discrimination in apprenticeships requires the sponsors of these programs to recruit more women. Today, more than 40 years later, there are still female apprentices

It was 3% at the time. Essentially, women have been promoted to the middle class from one of the clearest ways.

Patricia Shiu of the Federal Contract Compliance Program Office of the Department of Labor, led by Obama, said: "To be honest, this is a sad comment." "During the OFCCP tenure, we are ensuring that more women and People of color have not succeeded in working in the construction industry." She added: "You can write a prescription until you blush, but unless you have leadership, culture and high-level commitment, you can truly include life in the goal of equal opportunities. Otherwise they will not survive."

In my interviews with more than 40 businesswomen, most people told me that they were abused because of their gender. I have heard stories about men catching women and getting away with it, while women getting away with it, being told to go home to work in the kitchen, being given the most dangerous jobs, and jobs that prevent them from learning the precious skills needed for their careers. The uniformity of some abuse stories is amazing: the women who yelled out said that their tools were stolen or destroyed, the union refused to send them to work, or that they were blacked out across the industry. The story told by the women is: tied to a chair with shrink wrap and lifted high on a scissor lift. However, many of these women love their jobs, not only pensions, health care and wages, these money is enough to support the family, vacation and retirement, but also passionate about manual labor and skills.

When #MeToo movement

In 2017, a prominent figure in Hollywood, the press and academia rankings, businesswomen wondered if this would lead to changes in their industry. Legal Protection Fund of the Times

Women in the entertainment industry devote some of their resources to

Women are harassed in blue-collar workplaces. In California, Vasey used the momentum of #MeToo to successfully promote

Encourage contractors and apprentices to plan to recruit women and establish a workplace culture to protect them. She told me: "But I don't think there is a voice." "I still don't think that the voice of representing women in the blue-collar industry has arrived." Many young businesswomen I have spoken to feel that despite the unscrupulous abuse. , But the movement has swept their industry. "I really think it has no effect," Kaman told me when they first met. However, with few allies outside the industry and little attention to their careers, women in the construction industry have begun to speak out and fight for change.

Carman grew up in Bellevue, east of Seattle, and is the only girl in a family of four children. Her grandfather had immigrated from Costa Rica from a tuna boat when he was 16 years old. He was a fisherman’s engineer and took a boat to and from Alaska. Carman's father followed him in the industry and worked as a construction operations engineer in the Seattle Center, the city's downtown entertainment center. But the women in Kaman's family tend to stay at home, and she didn't consider working in the construction industry until her 20s.

Kaman and her three siblings only partially play their roles. Joe is a charismatic troublemaker. She dropped out of high school briefly to chase a girl, and then ran for class monitor on a platform that held a large gathering and won. Mike is the one who makes peace, the closest to Carman in age. Damien is a baby, and his family adopted him after his biological father abandoned him. Kaman is the girl. When she was young, her father insisted on putting on clothes, but after school, she would put on corduroy pants and play with her brothers outside. In high school, she, Joe, and Mike begged their parents to join the gym. For most of the weekend, they lifted weights, ran on treadmills and played pickled balls. Carman was able to bench press 175 pounds as a teenager.

After graduating from high school, she found jobs as a cashier and barista, and later helped with wholesale florist books. In that job, she spent the entire day in front of the computer in the basement of the brick warehouse with flowers she had never seen before. One day, her brother Mike started working in non-union heating and cooling. She asked her sister to help him repair the furnace at the nearby Uncle Snohomish’s house. Kaman Ed shrinks in the basement, watching her brother bend the sheet metal into a new hearth. Kaman knows that she prefers this kind of manual labor to the occupation behind the desk.

"You can write a prescription until you blush, but unless you have leadership, culture and high-level commitment to truly include life in your equal opportunity goals, they will not survive."

Carman started applying for jobs that could use both hands-dozens of positions, in plumbing, sheet metal, and one at a dog fence company. But no one called her back. She didn't start answering the phone until she changed the name on the resume from "Vanessa" to "Van". However, once the business owners learned that she was a woman, their interest in hiring her disappeared. They were unwilling to hide their sexism and questioned whether she could lift heavy pipes and tolerate the itch of insulation. Around that time, Kaman applied to the local union, hoping to join an apprenticeship program, but learned that she did not have any job.

For a while, she was engaged in non-union work, doing sheet metal work in the house. Kaman liked the job and helped repair the gas pipe in the Seattle mansion, where she caught a glimpse of the private bowling alley, wine cellar, and panic room. But by this time, she raised three sons by herself. She knew that the union’s apprenticeship would provide free education and better health insurance. Kaman visited the local sheet metal union, took a 20-minute math test there, and had a brief conversation with the apprentice coordinator. By the beginning of 2008, the construction industry began to prosper. The union has absorbed almost everyone, including women. "I think they don't necessarily want me," Kaman told me. "They want someone, and I'm sitting in front of their house." During induction training, she walked into a large conference room in a building in Kirkland, Washington, with 70s style furniture and full walls on the wall. It's a dusty cabinet. In a crowd of about 100, she is only one of about six women.

A few years ago, Carman drove to a commercial strip near Ballard in Seattle and asked for an octopus tattoo on her left arm. She doesn't know exactly why she always likes octopuses, but it has something to do with the octopuses' multiple attack methods. They can escape from small spaces, use their suction cups to lift thousands of pounds or inked predators. The tattoo has become a totem because she realizes that she must protect herself like an octopus. At work, she began to carry a notebook to record the names of tools that male colleagues asked her to bring. Now, while she was waiting for the artificial lift and scissor lift, she began to record what male colleagues said to her and what they did to her. No one can report these things to her, and no one can listen. But writing them down made her feel powerless.  

Since entering the building, she felt that everyone wanted her to quit. A supervisor cleans her and picks up trash all day long, which prevents her from learning the skills needed to promote career development. Another made her lose his first possible opportunity. But most disrespect feels like the inevitable price of work surrounded by men. The abuse of her trusted colleague on the light rail platform is even more painful. She said: "There are bullies everywhere." "But the truth is that he did it, and it lasted so long, no one did anything. They could have moved him to the work site." She said, always It is women, not men, who are moved to another workplace or fired. She said: "That won't solve any problems."

If possible, Kaman will quit the mission. But apprentices cannot withdraw or transfer tasks, lest they risk being kicked out of the program. In addition, she also needs money, which has increased to about $30 per hour. By then, her son's father had moved out of their house in Renton, Washington, leaving her as a mortgage and raising three boys. Many mornings, she woke up before the alarm clock went off, and the worries above her head continued to circulate. She put the boys in their parents' house before dawn, and if they fell back to sleep, she brought them into the house, even though her oldest son Jonah was close to 70 pounds. Then she went to work, and the man who fumbled her worked near her every day. One day, she noticed red bumps scattered on her hands, dotted on her face. The doctor she visited blamed them for their stress.

"There is an influx of a new generation."

Finally, a few months later, Kaman was called into the work trailer. When the supervisor told her that the work was progressing slowly, she tried to hide her pressure and she would be the first person to be fired. Driving home that day, she felt that her life was rearranging herself in the right way, even though the layoffs were unjust. She called a sheet metal company where she had worked before and worked in the store. Kaman said that women with thin metal sheets usually end up in stores without proper paternalistic services because they have fewer exposure to workers in different industries and fewer opportunities for harassment. She didn't want to spend her career in the store, but it gave her the opportunity to complete an apprenticeship while avoiding more harassment. Her new supervisor nominated her for training in sheet metal installation software, thus making her a foreman. This is the first time she has received encouragement or support from the industry. The following year, in 2013, Carman walked out of the union hall with about 50 people.

After that, the work became easier, but the culture did not. A month or so later, Kaman was standing twenty feet above the scissor lift, repairing pipes in a Microsoft building near Seattle, when she shouted to the passengers below, raising her a little bit. inch. These people were stationed there for this purpose, but they refused and insisted that she get off the elevator to do it herself. A few days later, when the same man moved the scissor lift to trap her in the duct, she was working in the duct near the ceiling. She sent crazy text messages to her colleagues on her mobile phone, asking for help. She later told me: "I thought I would be killed."

Around this time, the possibility of doing something to help other women began to absorb her thoughts. There are more women participating in sheet metal apprenticeships, but few women have completed them. If there are no more women in the industry, she believes that the industry is almost impossible to become a safe place for women to work.

Kaman began to look for allies among the few female sheet metal workers she knew. There is a Tausha Sheff, an apprentice, who sits next to Kaman in the union hall and gives a class on drawing software. Liz Fong, a female traveler who worked with her last time as an apprentice, and another apprentice, Kara Cowles. Before a trade union meeting in 2015, four women went to a nearby sports bar to drink and discussed what might be needed to make women feel more welcome. Carman thinks things are simple, like giving women a chance to get support and listening may help.

She called each female apprentice from an office in the union building and asked about their struggles. The woman began to chat. In almost every conversation, sexual harassment is the top priority. Being denied training is another matter, as well as the trouble of finding parenting. A month or two later, Kaman invited all women to a meeting at the public library in Tukwila, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. Some women worry that if they speak up, they will incur strong opposition from male colleagues. But Kaman found an ally among the union’s new business managers, a man named Tim Carter, who encouraged her to advance a formal mentoring plan and a women’s committee that could make suggestions about recruiting and retaining more women. Suggestions.

"We can't save all transactions. There are many people who don't work with you, and there is nothing you can do."

This led to changes outside the local area. Kaman was invited to participate in national conferences and talked with union business managers and agents to discuss how their practices hindered women from continuing to work in the industry. She and a few other women across the country helped set up a women's committee to provide advice to the international sheet metal trade union. The timing is right: the economy is booming, and the construction industry urgently needs workers. The International Steel Workers’ Union recently became the first to provide paid maternity leave until

.

Joseph Sellers (Jr.), president of the International Sheet Metal Association, began to hear Carman and other women's voices at the conference. Sellers told me in an interview: "When I heard and heard my sister's story, I was shocked, maybe still naive." "I had a sheet metal sister told me recently that she was pinned here. It’s a job. It wasn’t 25 years ago, it wasn’t 10 years ago, it was now, this is the moment when working in North America."

I was in October 2019

, An annual meeting of women in the industry. The event gathered 2,800 people at a Hilton hotel in downtown Minneapolis. They attended the #MeToo meeting and pension meeting, and wore hard hats to take care of their hair and skin. When we met, Kaman felt very encouraged. Sellers was one of the two union presidents who spoke at the meeting.

In August of that year, union leaders voted to pass the organization’s charter to add gender-neutral language, define harassment and discrimination, and make it a controllable crime. The union also promised to double the number of female apprentices and add an amendment to stipulate that no one will be refused membership of the union because of race and gender, among other categories. Sellers is the second generation of sheet metal workers with short hair cut and white. Under the escort of a group of female sheet metal workers, they outlined these changes to the audience. He said: "Our history and our culture have always been bad, but we will change this culture one place at a time." The seller told me that he appreciated the Women's Committee and forced him to face harassment and gender in the industry. Discrimination. He said: "The Women's Committee really changed me."

Kaman's optimism and her progress with the union are relatively rare. At the Women Entrepreneur Conference, despair permeated many conversations with the women I met. One of them is Kimberly Brinkman, a water spray installer in her 50s who lives near Minneapolis. After what she described as years of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, Brinkman sued her union and two contractors in late 2019.

"Our union has been broken. Women and people of color, we will not be treated like brothers in brotherhood." Brinkman said as we sat in the hotel lobby. "We are cousins ​​far away, no one wants to talk about us."

Brinkman's abuse began in the first year of apprenticeship, in 1999. In her first job, the foreman often beat her on the radio in the workplace, insulting her loudly and asking her to run from one side of the workplace to the other to bring him tools. Workers in another industry complained. She said that she was very angry. The foreman had falsely sexually harassed Brinkman's defender and asked her to meet with the company investigator to show that she was the man's accuser. Brinkman denied her allegations, but despite this, she has a reputation for harassment. Her car was locked. In another job as an apprentice, a foreman waved to her and said, "I just want to see if I can take you away with one finger." The staff of about twenty people laughed.

Over the years, little change has been made. Brinkman said she has always been subject to a “checkerboard check,” which involves moving women and minorities from work to work, hiring them only to achieve the minimum participation that sometimes exists in public projects Target, but will be fired quickly when the target is reached. The union has only 3 women entrepreneurs out of 380 active members. But Brinkman said she has never worked in the industry for about two decades. Sometimes, she was unemployed for several years, accumulated unemployment, and then turned to food stamps to struggle from retirement. Brad Hopping, the union training director, declined to comment.

Brinkman said: "I became a dead person when I walked." Her union, like everyone else, is now more open to women, and what she and others told me is largely from the past ten years. Economic success drives the demand for workers. She said: "We have recruited a lot of women in the apprenticeship system, which is really great." "But if the culture doesn't change, we really just expanded the revolving door." Now, workers are facing permanent unemployment due to the coronavirus. , Brinkman and others worry that any progress made by women will be compromised.

I met women who opposed the local boiler manufacturer’s union in Northern California. In 2016, a female apprentice

In a lawsuit, the union failed to resign her because of her gender and retaliated against her after she complained by falsely accusing her of making inappropriate sexual comments. Seven women came forward to testify. Genevieve Leja is one of them. She told me that the apprentice instructor of the union refused to see her or train her in welding and other skills, and male colleagues verbally harassed her at the work site. The man drew the labia with chalk on the metal beams at the work site and asked Leja for her opinion on the accuracy of the drawings. Another apprentice, Sheila Walton (Sheila Walton) told me that she fumbled while polishing the boat. She said that after she complained, the union did nothing. Edith Pastor, one of the few women in the union, told me that she was denied training and must study the industry alone. She said: "Men won't help you because they say you are looking for a job from another man." Tajuana McNear told me that after missing a few months of work when his son was suffering from cancer, Learned that to continue, she must restart the apprenticeship. The case is

Before being tried in 2019. The union declined to discuss the lawsuit, but said it is working hard to recruit female apprentices.

"Our union was broken. Women and people of color, we are not treated as brothers in brotherhood. We are distant cousins, and no one wants to talk about us."

In my opinion, the unabashed hostility towards women is different from the plunder experienced by white-collar workers, which is often better covered up. In the industry, women rarely have the right to choose. The union represents all its members and may be reluctant to take a stand on either side. Allegedly, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency responsible for investigating claims of gender discrimination in the workplace and granting workers the right to sue under Chapter VII, is understaffed and provided remedies in only 18% of cases.

. According to federal law, the apprenticeship program is only for "sincere effort" to recruit women and people of color, which is a vague principle that is difficult to implement. And because of the transient nature of construction workers, it is difficult to prove that any employer or union is responsible for discrimination.

Lisa Stratton, Brinkman's lawyer, was particularly straightforward. She said: “It’s like Chapter 7 of the Civil Rights Act has never been involved in the construction industry.” “This is a systematic practice that class litigation lawyers should devote themselves to, and the reason is that they (union (And contractors) are so successful in distinguishing and keeping the number of women in each union so low, local, [class action] is not enough." Stratton won the award involving undocumented workers and paper mills and processing plants. Women's case. But in terms of construction, she said: “The law doesn’t handle this kind of situation very well.” When we met at the Women Entrepreneur Conference in Minneapolis, Stratton told me that to Brinkman The study of the case obscured her view of the legal system as a remedy. She said: "I always feel that the law has the power to change everything." "With this, I feel powerless." In July, a judge rejected Brinkman's complaint against the union, but targeted the two The contractor’s discrimination lawsuit is still ongoing.

On a drizzly afternoon last year, Carman arrived at a diving bar in Seattle to attend the monthly meeting of the Women's Committee that has been operating since 2016. She was carrying a small black toolbox filled with tampons and sanitary napkins. "Have you heard of it?" Kaman asked the two sheet metal workers who had arrived before her, Tammy Meyen and Jamie Kunnap. "Tampon?" Mayne said. Kaman explained that a female apprentice accidentally put a box of tampons on a table at the work site. She said, "These people have lost their minds." Calls, text messages and emails from male colleagues surprised her. These people were offended by seeing the tampon.

These people want Kaman to handle the matter with the apprentice, as if this is a problem that needs to be solved. These women have very different views on the immediate problem: the workplace is usually located in a remote area, far from pharmacies and 7-11, and there are almost no large potty equipped with tampon dispensers. Working unexpectedly for a period of time usually means having to take pay home. Carman came up with an idea: She handed the toolbox to a worker attending the meeting and hung it in a potty at a site of her company. In the end, she thought of assembling more of these toolboxes and then distributing them to many women, but this was only the beginning.

Kaman sat on the head of the table, and as more and more women arrived, beer, spicy wings and hummus gradually replaced Kaman's seat. The antlers hung on the wall, and the keg rang through the room. The women adopted different construction methods. Some people, such as Carman, have fathers and brothers in the industry. Others have earned a college degree and then become dissatisfied with their careers or discouraged by low pay. A young woman had heard of an apprenticeship in architecture when she was imprisoned in the juvenile justice system. But almost all people have a moment of doubt whether they belong to this industry.

"Just like Chapter 7 of the Civil Rights Act has never been involved in the construction industry. This kind of class litigation lawyers should proceed in an orderly manner. This is why class litigation lawyers should not do this because they (union and contractors) are distinguishing and maintaining The number of women in each union is so low that it is very successful, and locally, [class action] is not enough."

Kaman stood up and spoke. She thanked everyone for their contributions in the past year: the career fairs they participated in, the mentors they trained. "Our proportion of female apprentices is about 10%," Kaman reports. This number is one of the highest among locals in sheet metal-the national average is 3%. This success prompted researchers at the University of Washington to approach Kaman. They plan to help half of the locals across the country adopt the program and then study its impact on the recruitment, retention and mental health of female apprentices.

One of Carman's goals this year is to allow more women to become union leaders. She said that elections for the positions of secretary, trustee and treasurer will be held soon. A few years ago, Carman was appointed to the apprenticeship planning committee. Her photo, with curly hair and lips polished with berry red lipstick, hangs at the entrance of the union hall and apprentice training facility in a large concrete building north of Seattle. She said: "Every capable person should participate in the competition." "We must go in."

Kaman talked about the constitution amended by the union to improve the conditions of women, and the union only announced it publicly that month. She mentioned that another female traveler, Emily Wigre, designed stickers that women can distribute to male allies who train women on the job site and protect them from harassment. In this way, the apprentice only needs to look at the man’s helmet to know who to trust.

Carman's work on behalf of other women has been transformed into a second full-time job. The year before, she promoted the locals to better receive pregnant apprentices. The two female apprentices had been transferred to a new place of work during their apparent pregnancy, and they were very likely to be fired. Now, this practice is not allowed. Kaman is also committed to supporting more and more mothers to become members. One of the apprentices, Arielle Mayer, lost his baby when he was 8 months old, so Carman organized a memorial service in the union hall and opened a GoFundMe account to help pay the money . "If it weren't for her to do all of this, the experience would be different. I might still stay in it, but it's much more difficult." Meyer recalled an afternoon in March last year when she was 3 The year-old daughter stretched her legs.

Another apprentice, SJ Alexander (from the tech industry to join the union), asked Carman for help when the foreman bullied her. "The first thing he said to me was,'Do you want to quit sheet metal after pregnancy?'" Alexander recalled, he is 43 years old and has 15 and 20-year-old daughters. He warned the other apprentices not to talk to her. Whenever she asked him about job duties, he would stand less than an inch beside her, refuse to answer, yell at her until she walks away. 

Alexander stopped interacting with him, but this meant that she could not understand her job responsibilities. She said: "It's not like my previous job. You just send passive aggressive IMs." "That's an impossible situation." She had a nightmare, dreaming of the foreman standing on her bed and yelling at her. And awakened herself and her daughter with a scream. Kaman made some calls. About a day later, Alexander stood in the yard of the union staff and painted her fence, when the union representative called to tell her that she would be sent to another company. Although this meant that Alexander would have to spend a few more months of apprenticeship before traveling, she was relieved. "Vanessa did it," she recalled her thoughts.

Carman still lives in the house she bought in 2007, in a quiet middle-class suburb south of Seattle. I drove there one Sunday afternoon. There is a basketball hoop on the street in front, and footballs and footballs are lying on the grass nearby. The family’s dog, Chepe, is a spaniel, standing on its hind legs by the large front window, barking. In the back room, Carman's little boys Gabriel and Elijah are learning to make balloon animals. A rivet Rosie doll is hung on a photo frame under the TV; an octopus is printed on one wall, and there is an octopus pillow on the double seat.

As we said, Kaman's family has been hanging out. First, her parents and her brother Damian, then Mike and his son. They brought cash to reimburse her for the tickets she bought for Cirque du Soleil to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her grandmother's birth next week. As a foreman, Kaman’s hourly salary is $63, more than any of her brothers. Her family has always been very close, but in recent years, she has become the center of her family.

Kaman’s parents told me that they were proud of her dedication to other businessmen, but sometimes they wanted her to do less. Her father Stan said: "She has too many fires." "I am worried about whether her diet is correct, whether she is getting enough sleep, whether she is taking vitamins. This is true nobility, I am very I admire her, but I am very worried. She has mastered the boys and their sports and her work status, and helped those in need. But you must also think about yourself." At the same time, Carman said she has spent It took several years to realize her voice, and she didn't think she could stop.

A few months ago, in the fall of 2019, Kaman was offered a detailed job. The position is coveted and resistant to recession, and can create computerized sheet metal drawings for installation. This will also make her back, and the latter will start to bother her. But she worked behind a desk for the first time in 15 years.

The table was behind a gray dividing line with a name tag with white letters on it, and walked a flight of steps from the stairs of the sheet metal company store where she completed her apprenticeship. One working day, we drove to the building in light rain. Kaman sits behind two computer monitors all day, using the drawing software AutoCAD to piece together puzzles of colorful shapes. Sometimes she would ask the person sitting next to her for help, and then complain to me that she had to ask.

"Remember when I told me that I entered the building because I hated office work?" She said that at the end of the working day, we wandered by her minivan before driving to pick up Elijah and Gabriel from their grandparents' house. Column. "Well, I work in an office. It's a bit like being an apprentice again."

But at some point, her work on behalf of other women almost began to resemble her real profession. However, when it comes to it, although she has seen progress, she is not sure how optimistic she will be. She said: "We can't save all transactions." "There are a bunch of people who don't cooperate with you, and you can't do anything about it."

But even if she is frustrated, even if there is only one person at a time, she can still see that the industry is changing. She said of her male colleagues: “This culture has not changed, but they have seen the support given to us by our leadership, and they are afraid to do what they might have done before.” In the end, it may boil down to waiting for misogynistic problem. Her son and friends did not consider gender roles, nor did they consider the idea of ​​their mother working in the construction industry. She said: "There is a new generation of people coming in."  

The Heisinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, and fair education reports for all readers for free. But this does not mean it is free. Our work makes educators and the public aware of the pressing issues in schools and campuses across the country. Even if the details are inconvenient, we will tell the whole story. Help us continue to do so.

Caroline Preston is a senior editor. She previously worked as a contributing editor on the digital team of Al Jazeera America, and as a senior reporter in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Her free writing has...

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