Why Not A Woman? (1979)

[Applause] i uh had an automobile i didn't have any money to get it fixed and i didn't have any man in the house that could fix it so it was i had to have the car in order to work and somebody had to fix it my boy was taking automobile mechanics just starting and i figured if a 15 year old kid could learn to fix a car so could i [Music] i found talking to employers that we still have a lot of died in the wool employers that figure a woman belongs home barefooted and pregnant well i'd probably ask him how many women he had in his employment and if he tells me none i'd probably use the old expression that you don't knock it if you haven't tried it and that he might be missing a very good opportunity to have a good productive employee in his firm [Music] the main reason i wanted this job is because before i held secretarial jobs which were not of course good paying jobs now i'm making good money i'm learning a trade and i'm supporting an 11 year old daughter i have bills and a son to support and i know that most of the jobs that qualified as men pay more money it doesn't really bother me to wear this hard hat and the gear that goes with it i mean i know i have to support my children and if i'm going to be gone eight to nine hours a day away from home i'm going to be making money to me welding is not hard and i really love the weld it's dirty if you could see but other than that i really love to weld [Music] i'm a member of teamsters local 538 i couldn't see wasted my time as a secretary to be truthful because the money just wasn't there and at the time i had two kids to support and it just seemed like this was a lot better suited for me i like to get up in the morning and be really feeling good about going to work instead of hating it and hating my job and this type of job i really love i really get excited about so i don't think there'd be any problem without getting up in the morning and heading out the door i do like the challenge and i also feel that craftsmen have built this country and i want to be a craftsman [Music] now back during world war ii it wasn't unusual to have between 500 and 700 females working in such jobs as welding and ship fitting and that was because we had a shortage of manpower then and we need all the women that we could get but since that time we haven't had a need to hire females until such time as 1972. since that period of time we have hired slightly over 300 females and at this point we're still running close to 200 working in such areas as transportation the incentive department welding burning shift fitting we have had a couple in shipping our previous experience has been from the standpoint of retention that we haven't found any marked difference between that of basically male or female my personal say would be that it takes a certain character more or less to adopt the shipyard type of work as opposed to the fact that somebody's either a male or female right now we have about 65 70 bus operators female bus operators were in the system at first we we had some problems but as the population of the women became larger we found that there was no significant difference between the women and the men that we employ in that capacity it's been a very successful program as far as we're concerned we've found in fact that the turnover rate among women is lower than it is among men the other thing that really surprised us i think most of the male supervisors said well you know we're going to have the problem with absenteeism the women are going to be absent more than the men that's not been the case we've found that women are at least as good as the men in almost all categories accidents absenteeism that's not to say we don't have some bad ones but then we have some bad men too but there is no significant statistical difference they perform just as well and we're just as pleased with their operation of the vehicles as we are with the men we have two women in our motor inspector apprenticeship training program at the present time and one in our machinist apprenticeship training program i would say that they're doing uh in some cases better than average but in no case worse than average their absenteeism and general uh demeanor has been the same as the other apprentices see our contracts made for the individual and it doesn't consider whether they're black or female or italians or anything or presbyterians or whatever it may be when they come in and start working all over they accepted them they were good workers they made the men work they worked too damn hard we've had complaints as far as they're receiving better work and the shop stores have gotten into it it's a simple fact that she produces better than some so naturally we're going to steer her into that work we want to get the most productivity i think one of the reasons she is here and she produces the way she does is because of the family that she's got to support her husband left her several years ago and she's got to earn her living and everything to support her family we've found to have our most success in hiring a person who really needs a job or he really wants the job around this area here we have a lot of depression and pocket depressions if you want to call them or their husband doesn't bring enough money home and right now kid going to college or so for some family these are the high mortgage payments you have today two of them must work so i see that's good that means that they're working because of a need and this is what i like to see gail is kind of a little bit different in the gail was actually interviewed for a secretarial position in my office she was very qualified she had an associate degree in secretarial sciences and after talking with gail we found out that really what gail was interested in was uh in actually working with her hands and being a technician and after some investigation and some arrangements she was put into this kind of work i think it's tremendous because i think gail is going to be a tremendous asset to our department our purchasing department went out looking to find personnel for the shop and we went down to the calvert educational center where mary was and we saw her where she worked and the things that she was doing down there we decided to hire her now she's been with us nine months and i'd say she's just about at the point now where she can take any job that we have for our own lathe and completed without any problem whatsoever when we did hire i have a little reservation because i've never had any females in the machine shop before but uh it's worked out very well the people in the shop have accepted her very well and now is the type of thing to where we regard her as just one of the felons you might say we don't recognize her as being a female or a different individual from everybody else you know she's here to do a job and does it well and we don't look at her as any different than anybody else in the shop people you work for go ahead and work for you no problem but it's only somebody who's never had a female supervisor they look at you as it to see if you're for real but once they find out that you mean business is no problem at all some welcome female supervisors well when i first came in the shop which was 25 months ago it was a new experience for me to be working with all men there were two of us who came into the shop and they at first didn't know how to react to us or us to them except that we were a novelty let's say you know and like they may say something out of line or use a swear word and right away they were apologizing now more or less we're treated as one of the guys you know the women are playing ping pong and and carrying on conversations with the men it's it's a normal social atmosphere we do not find that there's any differentiation made uh because of a person's sex men are you know really they're helpful you know if they see you doing something you know they it seems to them too hard they say hey you know don't do that you know you're a woman and i say well i'm trying you know let me try when i first had to pick up a floor joist i couldn't do it i couldn't lift one end of it and by the time i left the job i was carrying them you know all by myself they can physically handle the job is quite hard with me i i certainly don't object to it and by the same token i certainly certainly object to people of the male sex who can't perform heavy work i don't like them doing everywhere we thought we might have to alter some phases of the job but it hasn't proven to be a fact some of the windows that we handle on our trucks are pretty heavy they weigh up to 100 pounds and they have to be moved 40 feet from the back of the trailer to the front and we thought this might be a problem but it hasn't proven to be any problem to us so far a man is well coordinated because of sports for that reason he's a geared toward that direction to be able to use his body to be a more effective worker or the female is not i see in the next generation they're going to be the same as men not as strong but maybe stronger i don't know we got some strong women in that plant i hate to tangle with one of them i can think of real quick the women will work in this organization that will fit into this organization very well as long as they're prepared to come in and not expect us to treat them as a woman but to treat them as an employee but once they get into the meal then we have a responsibility and an obligation to make sure that they receive rights within the plant the question came up as to whether or not she could eventually do that work and there was some consideration to the fact that she might not be able to do it and therefore we ought to question whether we should maintain or be on a probationary period i went down and investigated the job and we discovered that the majority of the males that had come through prior to her had never gotten into that area of work as soon as she was required to do it [Applause] some members of the public don't take too well to women operators you know the myth about women drivers is still there and they get on the bus and there's a woman driver there they're naturally going to take out their hostilities but the women work out well we don't we don't have a problem with that they seem to fit into the scheduling pretty well we don't have the problems we anticipated with the women we have the number of attacks but it's no greater than it is with the men they have a woman has to be prepared for that it's a tough job it's tough physically it's tough mentally you're dealing with the public and you're dealing sometimes with pretty violent public but if they're prepared to accept that then they're going to fit into the job pretty well we're very happy with the women that we have and i would like to have more women apply for the oppressive training programs you know we grew up with my father being a carpenter and my sister and i would always stand around being his helper handing him tools and we'd hold a board and i remember the one thing was uh one of my biggest fears was with his level don't bump the level you know so i handled that with care even now he did most of the complicated work but uh you know i nailed up some drywall a few things i really enjoyed it really enjoyed the work asking a lot of questions and that's really where my interest came in well um my father and i were building this kitchen together and just oh i don't know how much longer would it take us taking us to complete it but my father was killed in a construction accident and the kitchen wasn't finished but i had a lot of contact with people from the union at that time and met a lot of carpenters uh and a few business agents one of the business agents told me if we needed help finishing the kitchen to call him and he'd send some men out so i called him one night and he was asking me what needed to be done and i guess i sounded like i knew what i was talking about i said well this certain molding has to be put on and this has to be leveled and we have to cut a hole here and he said you sound like you know a lot or something he said why don't you uh why did you take the apprentices test and i said oh no i don't think you know well when's a given you know he told me it was in the spring i said well you know what's involved and he said well mostly math a few things about hand tools and he said well you know it can't hurt to try so i took the test passed and was called for an interview and you have to make it through those two stages you know and i think it was a day or two later i got the letter from the carpenter saying you made it you know the apprenticeship is a four-year apprenticeship and i'm uh only a first-year apprentice so i've got really three three more years to go and i really don't plan you know what i'm gonna do when i'm a carpenter or what i'll be doing 10 years from now but i definitely i'm going to go through with the apprenticeship um the men on the job have asked me well what's it going to be like when you get married and your husband doesn't want you to work when i say well then i won't get married you know it's i would like to get married but it'd be something that that's going to be part of it i'm going to finish my apprenticeship i love i love doing things i love to be able to have the knowledge to be able to figure out you know something if it's broke how to fix it to be able to take care of things yourself without having to run you know to the first male to say you know i can't do this you know would you do it for me and i like independence as a woman as type of woman i am when we were started on a program of looking for women and minorities i went out to the technician training school and toured the school and talked to the placement officer down there we picked what we thought were some of the best qualified people and valerie came out for interview and she looked good to us so we hired her into our carpentry group and we we haven't had any any real problems since you came here i think everybody adjusts she adjusts and so the other guys in the in the carvery shop so i think it's gone very well i think it's a challenge for her she has progressed real well in a lot of work in comparison to some of the fellas we've even had in here well the only problems that i could think of in the beginning were my nervousness i didn't know what i was going to be expected to do i didn't know you know what i was going to be doing but instead it turned out to be that i'm still learning you know and they're still teaching me things all the time just like they would any other apprentice you know male or female i always wanted to be a carpenter but uh i never thought i'd have the opportunity and now that the times have finally changed and manpower is doing things to help women get into these jobs and that that can't help themselves particularly get into them they help me in a big way we take people who have obsolete skills or who are unskilled and we provide training for them in what we hope are viable vocational fields and when that training is completed we set about finding jobs for them in the local labor market i think a good example of that is one of our students who recently completed training in machine setup operation this woman has two children and she was when she came to us on dpa previously she had worked as a bar maid and she made about 68 dollars a week she came to us she said she pointed out that she wanted to be useful but she wanted to get enough money to support her family and it was mentioned to her that she could go into one of the non-traditional fields we let her know what the salaries ranges would be and she decided that she would like to try it and we already have her placed with general electric we can take these people on dpw we can give them skills and enable them to get off of relief and get good jobs or we can take people who have to get supplemental dpw because the jobs that they are on do not pay them enough to support their families give them skills that will get them into jobs that pay more wages than they got before [Music] [Applause] well whenever they first started i was a little leery about the situation but as a couple months went by and uh i've seen what they can do and they really surprised me they're on the same level as men learning even better they will take on a greater evaluation of the whole job i think they they listen a little more than the men do and they seem some of them seem more interested in it and they they really want to get out there and make that dollar there really isn't any kind of woman who's interested in in trades and skills all kinds of women are we have them all different shapes and sizes and colors and ages and it would really be hard for me to peg them and put them into a slot so many people have an image of a very masculine woman doing this kind of thing but it isn't true originally when the so-called barrier was breached where we had traditional male occupations being entered or at least trying to be entered by women certainly there was some negative feedback there's still some negative feedback i find i think some men that are in jobs that are worried that they're going to be replaced by women but that's not the case in reality anybody can take a job away from anybody else especially if the person looking for the job is better and it's pretty much cut and dry the job market's competitive especially competitive these days and whoever does the job the best is going to probably get the job a job and survive as an employee it's not to say that one woman might not replace another women have done skill labor before and they'll do it again they're doing it now it's here for them there's no need for for anybody to get stuck in in a low paying a dead end type of job if they don't want to and women work on the average of about 25 years of their life that's a long time to waste without skill or training or anything uh to fall back on i think one thing that stops them from from entering the trades is they think it's all heavy masculine uh work and it really isn't there's a lot of things that women do around the house are very heavy like carrying wet wash and 40 pound kids and things like that that's feminine where putting an electrical wire is isn't supposed to be feminine that's silly there's no correlation there what would happen if you unfortunately were killed in an accident or if you dropped dead of a heart attack would you want your wife to be able to sustain your present lifestyle take care of your children and educate them and almost in all cases individual answers yes but he also tells me he has life insurance and whatnot then we get down to the bare facts of statistics twenty thousand dollars worth of life insurance or ten thousand dollars worth of life insurance today isn't going to pay for much and ultimately that woman who's then going to be the head of the household is going to have to provide and she's going to have to provide adequately well i have three boys that i want to raise and i want to give them everything that any other family would have if they had a father where i'm divorced and i am the breadwinner of that family if they want to go to college have nice clothes i am the one that has to do it and i would like to buy a home for them and have all the things that any other family would have and that's why i'm into this really for the money the enjoyment uh the whole challenge of the whole thing i want something for my boys and that's how i decided yeah this is good because i can make money i can you know learn how to take care of my own family and give them a proper living instead of a meager little living that a waitress or a nurse or whatever can earn and uh i really don't feel like i'm going into a non-traditional job i just feel like i'm going to work for what i was trying to do i can fix my own dishwasher i've actually tried to fix my own car now which is very difficult for me but i can do it i can fix my own washer my own lights i mean it makes a great big difference things i would never have even thought about doing anything but plugging in electrical appliance let alone dig inside and find out what made it work it made a real big difference in me a big dream to work for sears and robots you know is the appliance repair person i i feel like you know they already ought to have a time card made out for me already because i'm going to go there to work my mind's made up that's what i want i feel that if they can do the job and i can as far as i'm concerned and i can give them good service and i am the breadwinner i need that job as badly as any man and i will work for my money and my promotion i'm going to be just as good as any man definitely i've proven that already give us a chance we'll prove you we'll prove our worth give me a chance i'll prove my worth [Music] do 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