Just 1.7 percent of employed carpenters are women, according to a 2014 Department of Labor statistics report on “nontraditional” occupations and not much has changed over past decades. Why are so few carpenters women? One thought is that there aren’t enough resources to let women know they can be carpenters, let alone support to help them stay in the industry once employed. The industry doesn’t market these opportunities to women which often have excellent pay scales. Women don’t know anything about them. They don’t know what these jobs entail. They don’t know how much they pay. They don’t know why they should be interested in these jobs. So most apprenticeship programs get very small numbers of female candidates.
Adapted from Women Carpenters’ Silent Struggle July 13, 2015 by Carter Sherman http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/07/13/women-carpenters-silent-struggle/
Alice Napierski, Carpenter Syracuse, New York 1972
