LAS VEGAS—Women today represent less than 10% of the nation’s construction workforce, which is facing a shortage. But Jovan Johnson is committed to changing that statistic.
Twenty years ago, Johnson was a single mother of a second grader struggling to pay the bills while working a $7-hour job at Walmart in Las Vegas. "I was stocking shelves with big, heavy bags of dog food. I'd get my check, and I'm tired and broke, you know?” she told The BiGS Fix recently. “It just wasn't enough.”
Then Johnson discovered an unlikely option — becoming a rare female construction worker. To get the chance to build highway bridges, she joined the United Brotherhood of Carpenter and Joiners’ free apprenticeship program, which is the way most women join the union. First, she had to overcome a potential crisis – childcare for her son, since traditional centers didn’t open until 7 a.m. yet she had a 4 a.m. start time.
Then one morning Johnson took a deep breath, put on a hard hat, walked on to a dusty highway bridge and started learning – initially, sorting screws. She never looked back. In time, she joined Sisters in the Brotherhood, the union’s women-focused group that offers mentorship and career advice to the union’s 13,000 members.
Fifteen years later, Johnson transitioned from rank-and-file worker to a business agent, recruiting women and men from a range of sources, including non-union construction sites, high schools and even her former employer – Walmart.
And today, Johnson considers herself beyond privileged. She makes a good living, has access to quality healthcare benefits and training, is building toward a pension — and feels supported in a male-dominated profession.
“The leadership of our union is very supportive of women,” she said. “Being part of ‘Sisters in the Brotherhood’ is just one of those things where you know that if you just hang in there, there are so many women that will support you. … That's why you get up every day and lace up your boots and deal with who knows what every day … You know you have people that have been through exactly what you've been through.”
Seeing a need to not only recruit but retain women, the union is working on a number of programs and initiatives. One regional council, for instance, is exploring opportunities to provide childcare to members while another is examining maternity leave benefits. At a national level, the union is reimagining its culture – for example, changing the word “man hours” to “work hours.”
Closing the gap: Recruiting women can help an industry
More than 3 million children live in single-mother households that are below the poverty line in the United States. This underscores a need to provide women with pathways to jobs that not only provide an adequate income, but that also give them access to benefits and childcare.
The highway, street, and bridge construction industry saw rapid job growth in 2023, adding 2,800 new jobs per month. However, fewer than 11% of those new positions were filled by women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the same time, the construction industry is said to be kicking into high gear, thanks to sweeping legislation enacted under the Biden Administration: The CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Infrastructure Law, for example, provides $550 billion over fiscal years 2022-2026 in new federal investment in roads, bridges, mass transit, and water infrastructure, among others.
“With the three big bills … there's over $1 trillion in there (for) carpenters work,” said Doug McCarron, general president of the 142-year-old labor United Brotherhood of Carpenters, which lobbied for the legislation. Among other projects, the union’s members work on a range of investments expected to fuel the green energy transition, from massive electric vehicle factories and chips factories to nuclear power plants and solar energy farms.
To put it into context, Tom Flynn — the union’s general vice president — expects the legislation to generate job opportunities for both union members and contractors, “to be able to continue to work at historic levels for the next 5 to 10 years.”
Construction career comes with unexpected benefits – like leadership training
The construction industry also proved a game changer, both financially and personally, for Jackie Engle of Las Vegas. In her family, she is the first construction worker and first union member. She’s also a new grandmother.
For most of her adult life, Engle juggled odd jobs: driving a forklift in warehouses, cleaning homes, and mowing lawns. When the opportunity arose to join the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and take a higher-paying construction job with benefits, Engle seized it.
Today, Engle is among the few female “scaffolders,” a person specializes in erecting and working on scaffolding. On a typical day, Engle climbs as high as 175 feet carrying 70 pounds of tools – half her weight – strapped to her waist and back. She might also hang down from towers, bridges, and catwalks over gold mines, oil refineries or nuclear power plants.
Besides the better compensation and the camaraderie, Engle finds her work rewarding. She said, "It's exhilarating. I love climbing, swinging my hammer, and making a difference at work."
The work isn’t easy. But in addition to the required ongoing technical training, Engle is taking leadership training to learn soft skills that she says benefit her personally and professionally.
"I'm not a knucklehead anymore,” she said of the union’s Journey-Level Leadership Program. “It's given me structure, discipline, and helped me differentiate between emotions at work and my personal emotions. Leave your problems at home and at work when you leave for home. I've learned to do that and be a better worker … and everything else."
Developer: We need more women in the field – and beyond
In 1999, Roberta Sydney forged a path as a commercial real estate entrepreneur, founding a Boston-based firm that developed and managed 9 million square feet before she successfully sold it. Today, the former CEO serves on the board of a Canadian construction company and continues to advocate for women to join the male-dominated industry.
“Having women in the construction company – including in leadership – very much does matter. There is a labor shortage in this industry. If we're eliminating half of the population, we are handicapping ourselves to a tremendous degree,” Sydney told The BiGS Fix.
Because women are so underrepresented in construction, she said the Canadian construction company goes out of its way to recognize them – especially if they are in particularly male-dominated roles like project managers or head of safety, work in risk or finance, or swing hammers in the field.
“I do not believe this is an industry that must be male dominated,” Sydney said. “I think every job can be done by a woman.”