Posted on: Sunday, October 12, 2003

Women build role in construction

By Steve Johnson
Knight Ridder News Service

It has been a longstanding if troubling tradition in the male-dominated construction industry that any woman who dared venture near a building site risked rude stares, whistles and catcalls.

That is beginning to change, thanks in part to a growing group of female-owned construction companies. But the numbers of these female-run firms remains small. Only about one out of every 12 construction enterprises nationwide belongs to a woman.

And while men have become far more accepting of the opposite sex in recent years, some women who have broken into the business contend it remains an uninviting and at times downright hostile environment for those of their gender.

"You do still run into obstacles; it's a very closed network of contractors," said Liane Garcia, national vice president of Women Construction Owners & Executives and co-owner of Core Concrete in San Francisco. "A lot of women go out and get into the field and feel like they've been treated unfairly."

Some women say male workers have stolen their tools and pointedly refused to help them learn basic job skills. Others say male company owners frequently funnel subcontracts to their male pals. A few women also contend it's become tougher to get work since California passed Proposition 9 in 1996, which barred gender preferences in public contracting.

Nationally, women hold only about 897,000 — or 9.2 percent — of the 9.7 million construction-related jobs, mostly in clerical or administrative positions, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In California, about 75,000 women are employed in such work, accounting for 8.4 percent of the 885,000 construction jobs statewide.

Similarly, women own about 8 percent of the nation's 2.6 million or so construction companies, though their numbers appear to be increasing, some researchers say.

The U.S. Census Bureau only surveys the gender of business owners every five years. The agency changed its definition of ownership in 1997, when it published its most recent study, making comparisons with earlier ones difficult.

But based on an analysis of unpublished census data, the Center for Women's Business Research in Washington has concluded there were 212,916 women-owned construction firms nationally in 2002. That represents a 35 percent jump since 1997, the biggest increase of women entrepreneurs in any industry measured by the center.

Marlene O'Donnell, who co-owns O'Donnell Plastering in Santa Clara, Calif., with her husband, considers herself fortunate.

"I've been in this business 32 years," said the 65-year-old O'Donnell, whose company has worked recently at shopping centers in San Jose, Calif. "I have always been very well treated."

She is especially encouraged at the number of women supervising construction sites.

"I've seen a lot of the project managers are women now," O'Donnell said. "It's come a long way."

But others say getting into construction can be tough for women.

Although the increasing use of machines at building sites has softened some of the back-breaking labor, many construction jobs remain physically demanding, said the O'Donnells' 28-year-old daughter, Shawna Alvarado, who works with her mom and dad.

"You have to be strong," Alvarado said. "Our men lift up to 90-pound sacks of cement and that's on an everyday basis. I would say not many women can do that."

A woman with her own construction business could certainly hire others to do the heavy lifting. But most young women with an entrepreneurial bent don't even think about the building industry, said 32-year-old Arcadia Maximo, who owns a small construction firm in San Francisco.

"Construction work was the last thing on my mind coming out of high school," said Maximo, who previously designed window displays for Macy's and got interested in carpentry as a way of improving her creative skills. "It's just not something that is introduced to girls — that this is a viable career."

Pat McDonald, 55, of Santa Cruz, Calif., had a childcare business before getting into construction as a bookkeeper and truck dispatcher years ago. In 1994, she took over STI Trucking, which hauls gravel and other material to and from construction sites. And she is pleased that the vast majority of the men she has encountered have accepted her.

Still, McDonald added that it is too bad there aren't more women like her.

"It's rather pathetic," she said. "It's a very male-dominated industry."