(Saw whirrs)
Picture a typical construction site.
The heavy machinery
and the work trucks
filled with lumber and steel.
Now picture the construction crew
hard at work in their DayGlo vests
and hard hats,
their tool belts
slung over dusty dungarees.
Now picture that that crew is all women.
(Applause)
(Saw whirs)
So if you just had a brief moment
of cognitive dissonance,
you're probably not the only one.
Our stereotypical image
of “the construction worker” is male.
And by the numbers,
it's not hard to see why.
Only 11 percent of the construction
industry in the US is female,
and that includes operational positions.
On the front lines
of actual construction sites,
only four percent
of construction workers are female.
(Drill whirrs)
Four percent.
Just one in 25.
That's totally unacceptable.
But it's also a huge opportunity,
both for women and for the trades.
A new wave of tradeswomen --
carpenters, welders,
electricians and masons --
are rising through the ranks,
armed with their power tools,
creative thinking and new ideas
about who can and should
get to build our world.
(Drill whirrs)
I am determined to help more women
enter into and grow in the trades
because these are exciting,
well-paying and essential jobs.
More than just an economic
opportunity, though,
is a chance for women
to play an equal and substantive role
in the making of our physical world.
Construction for many women
is purpose-driven work,
a career in which power tools
represent personal power.
I want to walk on sidewalks,
cross bridges and enter buildings
that I know were raised
by a community of builders
that represents us all.
(Applause)
I want to live in a world built by women,
and I mean that in the most literal sense.
I have loved building things
for as long as I can remember.
And when I was 16 years old,
a petite, nerdy, multiracial young woman,
I walked on to my first construction site,
and it changed everything.
(Saw whirrs)
As I worked alongside
skilled masons and carpenters,
learned how to frame a roof
and mix concrete by hand,
for the first time in my life,
I felt powerful.
(Saw whirrs)
And at the end of that project,
I stood back and looked
at what we had built --
a town park with a performance stage,
paths and public furniture,
and I knew that I had something
to contribute to the world.
Construction transformed
my hopes and anxieties
into something tangible and beautiful,
something that I could
point to and say: “I built that.”
So I went on to study architecture,
and then I worked in architecture
and construction management.
And as I found myself
on job sites more frequently,
I was almost always the only woman.
And it never crossed my mind
to quit because of this,
but I did feel very lonely,
and I longed for a sense of community.
(Saw whirrs)
And over the past two decades,
as I have found and built
that community for myself,
I've realized that the reasons
that I love construction are not unique.
And that for my fellow tradeswomen,
we all walk on to a job site
with the same shared sense of purpose.
We know that for us,
building is both our power and our voice.
(Saw whirrs)
When I talk to my fellow tradeswomen,
they agree that working
in construction is gratifying,
it’s creative, and it’s fun.
It does not require some stereotypically
masculine brute strength --
that is what heavy machinery is for.
(Laughter)
Construction is mostly problem-solving,
visual and spatial reasoning
and a lot of communication and teamwork.
For women, a job in construction
can pay more than twice the hourly wage
of a comparable job
in child care or health aid work.
And while the gender pay gap in the US
hovers around 82 cents earned by women
for every male-earned dollar,
in construction,
the pay gap is nearly nonexistent,
at 99 cents to the dollar.
(Applause)
Construction and construction management
are also among the fastest
growing jobs for women
with clear paths
into advancement and leadership.
These are also jobs
with learn-while-you-earn
training programs,
making them financially feasible careers
to enter or to transition into.
(Drill whirrs)
The trades desperately need women, too.
With over 300,000 jobs left unfilled,
women are a hugely untapped labor pool.
And this is a time when the demand
for infrastructure is only growing.
And new building technologies
will require new skills
and new perspectives
to break from the way
it's always been done.
(Drill whirrs)
We already understand the value
of having more women
in historically male-dominated spaces,
like politics, C-suites and STEM.
What is it going to take for tradeswomen
to take part and to take over?
We do need a few things
from the industry in greater numbers.
We need more active recruitment
and more equitable hiring practices.
And we need leaders of all genders
to step up, advocate
for a better workplace culture
and to bring others along with them.
(Saw whirrs)
But our best invested effort
is looking to the future.
We must create intentional spaces
for the next generation of tradeswomen
to learn technical skills
while being unconditionally supported
by a community of other women.
(Drill whirrs)
So in 2008, I founded a nonprofit
to teach design and construction skills
to middle and high school students,
specifically young women of color.
Now, nearly 14 years later,
that nonprofit, Girls Garage,
has taught over 1,000 girls
and gender-expansive youth
how to use power tools --
(Applause)
how to use power tools,
weld, draft construction documents
and work on a job site.
And together we have built
over 150 pro-bono projects
for other nonprofits in our community.
(Applause)
(Drill whirrs)
When young women walk into Girls Garage,
they're acknowledged as capable and whole.
They are taught by female instructors
who are architects
and carpenters and welders,
who have lived lives
and who've walked paths
similar to their own.
When a student uses the chop saw
for the very first time,
I'm standing right next to them
saying, "You got this."
And these are the things
that make the difference.
And so the next generation
of tradeswomen, our students,
will enter the trades
knowing what it feels like
to be respected and valued
and will know how to demand it
when they're not.
(Applause)
I may not have had a female mentor
on my first construction site,
but I can pay forward what I lacked
to the 16-year-old in front of me.
In step with other youth organizations
and apprenticeship programs,
we're creating strong
communities of tradeswomen
as a microcosm for what we believe
the industry needs at a macro level.
We're filling their toolboxes
with drills and saws and ferocity and joy.
These are the young women
who will go forth
to build the world we all want to see.
(Applause)
So when I picture a construction site,
they are the crew that I imagine.
This is my actual Girls Garage crew,
the construction crew of my dreams.
This is not a pipe dream.
It's already a reality,
but one that we must name
and nurture and multiply.
It is our job now to demand
unconditional support for tradeswomen
in their quest to play a vital role
in the construction of our world.
Thank you.
(Applause)