Women Carpenters/Women in Trades
There are things about life that are against you. In sixth grade, the gender roles were very strict, sexism was very hard for me. I remember beginning in seventh grade, the teachers said, ‘What do you want to be’? I raised my hand and said, ‘A carpenter.” All the kids laughed. The teacher said, ‘You know women can’t be carpenters!’ I think my life changed a lot-- that women couldn’t do things they wanted to do. It took me a long time to get over this. Everyone thought you were really weird for doing things out of the norm. You are put to shame for this, and no one should have to go through that. -Diana Solís
With a commitment to having women lead all aspects of the Festival, women built its booths and stages.
You could look down this street and see all these booths. And it was all done by women. And so it was a show of strength. It was a show of beauty. Even the women built the booths. -Diane Avila, May 25, 2022
This work was led by the “Women in Carpentry Group,” a support group for early women carpenters in Chicago. This photo features Wendy Pollack, the only woman in her class of 80 who completed a four-year apprenticeship with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. Later in 1979, Pollack was a founding member of Chicago Women Carpenters, which later became Chicago Women in Trades, a group that advocates for and supports the entry and retention of women in skilled trades today (Chicago Bar Foundation, “Wendy Pollack”). In the photo above, Pollack works beside Pilsen resident Jackie Negrete, one of the first Latina carpentry apprentices in the 18th Street VICI (Ventures in Community Improvement Demonstration) project, run by the 18th Street Development Corporation with federal funding through the Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act of 1977 (Employment and Training Administration, “Enhanced Work Projects”). Other women carpenters and carpentry apprentices joined Negrete and Pollack to build Festival booths and the stage. Diane Avila recalls helping to tie-dye cloth to place atop the booths for shade.
In 1979, Chicago’s women and people of color glimpsed a pathway to equity in union construction jobs that had been largely the preserve of White males. During World War II, women had been actively recruited to work in non-traditional defense industries through the Rosie the Riveter campaign. Yet by the end of the war, women were pushed out of these jobs to favor male veterans. By the 1960s and 1970s, the civil rights and women’s movements fought for and achieved a series of laws mandating equal pay and prohibiting employment discrimination and harassment. For the building trades, in 1965, Executive Order (EO) 11246 prohibited “federal contractors and subcontractors and federally-assisted construction contractors and subcontractors that generally have contracts that exceed $10,000 from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (Moir, Thomson, and Kelleher., Unfinished Business, 6). The year before the Festival, the Carter Administration amended EO 11246, setting a goal that women would have 6.9% of contractors’ work hours. Also In 1978, the Department of Labor amended federal regulations for apprentices to prohibit discrimination and require affirmative action goals and timetables for increasing the numbers of minority and women participation (Moir, Thomson, and Kelleher., Unfinished Business, 6).
After these regulatory changes, small numbers of women like Pollack and Negrete trained in the construction trades, believing they were leading a gender transformation in these fields. Despite lesbian-baiting at many worksites, lesbians entered these fields in Chicago and elsewhere. Construction jobs attracted lesbians because they challenged feminine gender roles and attire, rewarded women for being strong and physically capable, and provided union wages that would better enable them to support themselves and their families without a male head of household (Frank, 2001).
Despite these new regulations and the high hopes of Chicago’s women in trades at the Festival, in 2021, no more than 11% of construction workers were women (Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics”). Yet the carpenters and carpenter apprentices at the Festival let us know what optimistic and empowered Latinas “have done... and can do” with their strong hands and bodies.
To see and hear Chicago women Pioneers in Carpentry, check out another video documentary by Eleanor Boyer from 1981 (24 min.) available on the Media Burn website. Jackie Negrete doesn't speak here, but she appears (in flowery dress) in the Chicago Women's Carpentry support group (16:40).
SOURCES:
Chicago Bar Foundation. “Wendy Pollack.” 2020 https://chicagobarfoundation.org/awards/morsch-recipients/2020-wendy-pollack/.
Employment and Training Administration, Department of Labor. Enhanced Work Projects– The Interim Findings from the Ventures in Community Improvement Demonstration. Corporation for Public/Private Ventures. ED 203 271. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1980, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED203071.pdf.
Frank, Miriam. “Hard Hats & Homophobia: Lesbians in the Building Trades.” New Labor Forum 8 (Spring - Summer, 2001): 25-36.
Moir, Susan, Meryl Thompson, and Christa Kelleher. Unfinished Business: Building Equality for Women in the Construction Trades. Boston Labor Resource Center Publications. Paper 5. Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts, 2011, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=lrc_pubs.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. 2021, https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm