Oh-Oh...
Koontz - Here I go backtracking again...
What I should have said in my post is that unions, licenses, apprenticeships, etc., are not the benchmarks I use to evaluate quality. It's not because the programs don't have value, it's because, as one of my brothers says, "Some people can stay stupid until the day they die." Just because you have the education doesn't mean you've actually learned anything and it certainly doesn't insure that you've learned the right things.
My education was an informal apprenticeship, and certainly nothing I studied in college was applicable to my new field. I was hired by a contractor who thought I might have the talent and the attitude for the kind of work he was doing, and he was willing to teach me. Ten years later we formed a partnership, and ten years after that, we're still working together.
Why aren't there more woman in my field? There are alot of anwers to that and I only know some of them. Certainly I was lucky in that I met someone who didn't care whether I was male or female. He was looking for a reliable, hard worker and after that he figured my interest would determine the rest of it. This man was the general contractor on the jobs and his brother was his lead carpenter. To this day, I've never met such egalitarian people. These guys don't care if you're young or old, male or female, gay or straight, short or tall. They actually deal with people from a starting point of equality, although their starting point often seemed to be that everyone is an equal ass. That's okay with me; I had four brothers growing up, so I was not unuseto the odd ways guys deal with people.
Training is a big deal in construction. You learn by doing and if you're lucky, someone's around to show you how to construct a sheetrock jack after you've worn you're arms off and given yourself a migraine because you held up 30 sheets of rock with your head while you nailed it off to the ceiling. But, as in any field, finding people to share their knowledge is tough. Tradespeople are notoriously selfish about it. Finding someone willing to teach is tough. This is where the junior college course in carpentry and framing is valuable.
Having had four brothers, I learned that I could ask for help, but it would come on their timeframe, not mine. Although that's fair, I do it to people all the time now myself, I'm not a patient person. I found it easier to learn how to tune up my car rather than wait for one of the boys to get around to it. You must have that attitude in the trades. You have to be able to figure out how to get something done, usually by yourself. Here's my sexism coming out--I don't believe alot of women make that leap. Women are too patient. Is that training or genetics? I have no idea, but I see it happen all the time. Women may get impatient at the waiting, but they continue to do it. That's not an effective attitude in a business where time literally is money.
I think generally, there aren't a lot of women in construction because women don't have the sense that they can work in this field. They think they aren't strong enough, big enough, tough enough-and they weren't raised with an attitude that showed them any different. I think that in general, women aren't in construction because we live in a seperate and still strongly sexist society. And I think that's unfortunate.
What I should have said in my post is that unions, licenses, apprenticeships, etc., are not the benchmarks I use to evaluate quality. It's not because the programs don't have value, it's because, as one of my brothers says, "Some people can stay stupid until the day they die." Just because you have the education doesn't mean you've actually learned anything and it certainly doesn't insure that you've learned the right things.
My education was an informal apprenticeship, and certainly nothing I studied in college was applicable to my new field. I was hired by a contractor who thought I might have the talent and the attitude for the kind of work he was doing, and he was willing to teach me. Ten years later we formed a partnership, and ten years after that, we're still working together.
Why aren't there more woman in my field? There are alot of anwers to that and I only know some of them. Certainly I was lucky in that I met someone who didn't care whether I was male or female. He was looking for a reliable, hard worker and after that he figured my interest would determine the rest of it. This man was the general contractor on the jobs and his brother was his lead carpenter. To this day, I've never met such egalitarian people. These guys don't care if you're young or old, male or female, gay or straight, short or tall. They actually deal with people from a starting point of equality, although their starting point often seemed to be that everyone is an equal ass. That's okay with me; I had four brothers growing up, so I was not unuseto the odd ways guys deal with people.
Training is a big deal in construction. You learn by doing and if you're lucky, someone's around to show you how to construct a sheetrock jack after you've worn you're arms off and given yourself a migraine because you held up 30 sheets of rock with your head while you nailed it off to the ceiling. But, as in any field, finding people to share their knowledge is tough. Tradespeople are notoriously selfish about it. Finding someone willing to teach is tough. This is where the junior college course in carpentry and framing is valuable.
Having had four brothers, I learned that I could ask for help, but it would come on their timeframe, not mine. Although that's fair, I do it to people all the time now myself, I'm not a patient person. I found it easier to learn how to tune up my car rather than wait for one of the boys to get around to it. You must have that attitude in the trades. You have to be able to figure out how to get something done, usually by yourself. Here's my sexism coming out--I don't believe alot of women make that leap. Women are too patient. Is that training or genetics? I have no idea, but I see it happen all the time. Women may get impatient at the waiting, but they continue to do it. That's not an effective attitude in a business where time literally is money.
I think generally, there aren't a lot of women in construction because women don't have the sense that they can work in this field. They think they aren't strong enough, big enough, tough enough-and they weren't raised with an attitude that showed them any different. I think that in general, women aren't in construction because we live in a seperate and still strongly sexist society. And I think that's unfortunate.
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