Overview:
Girls are underrepresented within the development business for quite a lot of causes. Some California organizations try to alter that.
Jessica Alvarez Castañeda was sick of low-paying jobs. For years, the 39-year-old mom of 4 had been “breaking her back for almost nothing” as a cashier, nursing assistant, babysitter, home cleaner and prepare dinner.
She was accustomed to the expert trades, which embrace careers comparable to carpentry, roofing and portray, as a result of her three brothers labored as pipefitters.
However she hadn’t severely thought of pursuing a commerce herself till 2022, when she discovered {that a} buddy of a buddy — additionally a lady — had accomplished a coaching program to change into a sheet steel apprentice.
“I had grabbed a hammer before, but I mean, that’s pretty much it,” mentioned Alvarez Castañeda, who lives in Mountain View, with fun. “That was my major concern, that I wasn’t going to be strong enough when I’d be expected to do the same work as a man.”
Girls make up about 11% of the development business nationally, in accordance to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, underrepresented for causes comparable to misperceptions of the business, household pressures, and remedy within the office. However many California trades present six-figure salaries inside just a few years, together with well being advantages, a pension and union illustration — a pretty profession path as girls more and more serve as household breadwinners.
With funding from California’s Division of Industrial Relations, coaching packages and constructing trades councils try to extend the variety of girls and nonbinary folks in a workforce traditionally dominated by males. They’re discovering success with focused recruitment, childcare stipends and one-on-one mentoring.
Alvarez Castañeda signed up for the Trades Orientation Program, hosted by Santa Clara County nonprofit Working Partnerships USA. This system’s yearly enrollment of 90 to 100 folks is now about one-third girls, mentioned Louise Auerhahn, the nonprofit’s director of financial and workforce coverage, an enormous leap from only one girl within the pilot 2014 class who “was there because her boyfriend was there, too.”
“We’ve found that because there is such a social stricture that says construction is for men, you have to be really up front about, ‘This is for women, and that’s who we’re looking for,’” Auerhahn mentioned. Working Partnerships USA now creates separate fliers, social media adverts, picture campaigns and recruitment occasions to focus on girls and nonbinary folks.
However introducing girls to the trades is simply the primary hurdle. Analysis reveals that problem discovering childcare is a central motive that ladies think about leaving the trades, making a “massive barrier” to retention, mentioned Beli Acharya, govt director of Building Trades Workforce Initiative, a nonprofit that works with constructing trades councils, unions, and neighborhood organizations in Alameda, Napa, Contra Costa and Solano counties. California is among the many most costly states for childcare.
“So much of the industry’s collective efforts has been, ‘Hey, let’s get them in,’ but a lot of folks are dropping out after the first or second year of being an apprentice, and we’re not really achieving the ultimate goal of getting more women in leadership,” Acharya mentioned. “Contractors are trying to figure out how to deal with it, unions are trying to figure out how to deal with it, because if we’re going to try and target more women, we need to address the needs of women.”
That problem has prompted new effortsfueled by the Division of Industrial Relations’ Equal Illustration in Building Apprenticeship or “ERiCA” grants, to supply childcare to these most in want. Between 2023 and 2025, the division awarded $2.1 million to the Building Trades Workforce Initiative to establish round 200 single-parent apprentices and pre-apprentices to obtain between $5,000 and $10,000 in childcare assist.
Fifty-six folks have obtained Building Trades Workforce Initiative’s stipends to date, greater than half of whom are girls.
Sharon Brown, a 40-year-old portray apprentice from Oakland and a single guardian to 3 children, obtained an $8,000 stipend from the nonprofit. The stipend allowed Brown to rent a constant caregiver to convey her six-year-old daughter to and from faculty throughout her early-morning shifts, reasonably than counting on household.
The secure routine has “helped in ways that I couldn’t even imagine,” Brown mentioned, partly as a result of her daughter is on the autism spectrum and nonverbal. Not too long ago, the caregiver and her daughter got here up with a private handshake. “To see her remember the handshake and actually execute it out, it’s like — wow. It’s really paying off, the time you’re spending with her,” Brown mentioned. “I can’t stop thinking about, what would it be like if I didn’t have this person to help?”
Organizations are additionally embracing mentorship for girls. Tradeswomen, Inc., a Bay Space-based nonprofit, recruits girls into pre-apprenticeship packages and guides them all through all the job-seeking course of. “God’s honest truth, you’re going to face some discrimination, and we want you to be prepared,” mentioned Felicia Corridor, Tradeswomen Inc.’s workforce improvement supervisor. “We’re still there for them, we’re holding their hand, being their motivation and support system.”
Throughout her pre-apprenticeship, Alvarez Castañeda likewise obtained a feminine mentor who helped her with apprenticeship follow assessments, coached her via profession selections, and introduced her on a last-minute journey to purchase work boots and gear when she started her sheet steel apprenticeship.
Alvarez Castañeda is on observe to make $36 hourly this 12 months — up from $26 hourly in her most up-to-date job as a prepare dinner at Google’s Sunnyvale campus — and is constructing a pension. Plus, her two daughters suppose her job is “cool,” she added.
For girls who’re contemplating coming into the trades, “Don’t think that you can’t do it,” Alvarez Castañeda mentioned, “because you can.”
Monetary assist for this story was offered by the Smidt Basis and The James Irvine Basis.
