What if Women Built the World They Want to See? | Emily Pilloton-Lam | TED

(Saw whirrs)

Picture a typical construction site.

The heavy machinery

and the work trucks filled with lumber and steel.

Now picture the construction crew

hard at work in their DayGlo vests and hard hats,

their tool belts slung over dusty dungarees.

Now picture that that crew is all women.

(Applause)

(Saw whirs)

So if you just had a brief moment of cognitive dissonance,

you're probably not the only one.

Our stereotypical image of “the construction worker” is male.

And by the numbers, it's not hard to see why.

Only 11 percent of the construction industry in the US is female,

and that includes operational positions.

On the front lines of actual construction sites,

only four percent of construction workers are female.

(Drill whirrs)

Four percent.

Just one in 25.

That's totally unacceptable.

But it's also a huge opportunity, both for women and for the trades.

A new wave of tradeswomen --

carpenters, welders, electricians and masons --

are rising through the ranks,

armed with their power tools,

creative thinking and new ideas

about who can and should get to build our world.

(Drill whirrs)

I am determined to help more women enter into and grow in the trades

because these are exciting, well-paying and essential jobs.

More than just an economic opportunity, though,

is a chance for women to play an equal and substantive role

in the making of our physical world.

Construction for many women is purpose-driven work,

a career in which power tools represent personal power.

I want to walk on sidewalks,

cross bridges and enter buildings

that I know were raised by a community of builders

that represents us all.

(Applause)

I want to live in a world built by women,

and I mean that in the most literal sense.

I have loved building things for as long as I can remember.

And when I was 16 years old, a petite, nerdy, multiracial young woman,

I walked on to my first construction site, and it changed everything.

(Saw whirrs)

As I worked alongside skilled masons and carpenters,

learned how to frame a roof and mix concrete by hand,

for the first time in my life, I felt powerful.

(Saw whirrs)

And at the end of that project,

I stood back and looked at what we had built --

a town park with a performance stage, paths and public furniture,

and I knew that I had something to contribute to the world.

Construction transformed my hopes and anxieties

into something tangible and beautiful,

something that I could point to and say: “I built that.”

So I went on to study architecture,

and then I worked in architecture and construction management.

And as I found myself on job sites more frequently,

I was almost always the only woman.

And it never crossed my mind to quit because of this,

but I did feel very lonely, and I longed for a sense of community.

(Saw whirrs)

And over the past two decades,

as I have found and built that community for myself,

I've realized that the reasons that I love construction are not unique.

And that for my fellow tradeswomen,

we all walk on to a job site with the same shared sense of purpose.

We know that for us, building is both our power and our voice.

(Saw whirrs)

When I talk to my fellow tradeswomen,

they agree that working in construction is gratifying,

it’s creative, and it’s fun.

It does not require some stereotypically masculine brute strength --

that is what heavy machinery is for.

(Laughter)

Construction is mostly problem-solving,

visual and spatial reasoning and a lot of communication and teamwork.

For women, a job in construction can pay more than twice the hourly wage

of a comparable job in child care or health aid work.

And while the gender pay gap in the US hovers around 82 cents earned by women

for every male-earned dollar,

in construction, the pay gap is nearly nonexistent,

at 99 cents to the dollar.

(Applause)

Construction and construction management

are also among the fastest growing jobs for women

with clear paths into advancement and leadership.

These are also jobs

with learn-while-you-earn training programs,

making them financially feasible careers to enter or to transition into.

(Drill whirrs)

The trades desperately need women, too.

With over 300,000 jobs left unfilled,

women are a hugely untapped labor pool.

And this is a time when the demand for infrastructure is only growing.

And new building technologies will require new skills

and new perspectives

to break from the way it's always been done.

(Drill whirrs)

We already understand the value

of having more women in historically male-dominated spaces,

like politics, C-suites and STEM.

What is it going to take for tradeswomen to take part and to take over?

We do need a few things from the industry in greater numbers.

We need more active recruitment

and more equitable hiring practices.

And we need leaders of all genders

to step up, advocate for a better workplace culture

and to bring others along with them.

(Saw whirrs)

But our best invested effort is looking to the future.

We must create intentional spaces

for the next generation of tradeswomen to learn technical skills

while being unconditionally supported by a community of other women.

(Drill whirrs)

So in 2008, I founded a nonprofit

to teach design and construction skills to middle and high school students,

specifically young women of color.

Now, nearly 14 years later,

that nonprofit, Girls Garage,

has taught over 1,000 girls and gender-expansive youth

how to use power tools --

(Applause)

how to use power tools,

weld, draft construction documents

and work on a job site.

And together we have built over 150 pro-bono projects

for other nonprofits in our community.

(Applause)

(Drill whirrs)

When young women walk into Girls Garage,

they're acknowledged as capable and whole.

They are taught by female instructors

who are architects and carpenters and welders,

who have lived lives and who've walked paths

similar to their own.

When a student uses the chop saw for the very first time,

I'm standing right next to them saying, "You got this."

And these are the things that make the difference.

And so the next generation of tradeswomen, our students,

will enter the trades

knowing what it feels like to be respected and valued

and will know how to demand it when they're not.

(Applause)

I may not have had a female mentor on my first construction site,

but I can pay forward what I lacked to the 16-year-old in front of me.

In step with other youth organizations and apprenticeship programs,

we're creating strong communities of tradeswomen

as a microcosm for what we believe the industry needs at a macro level.

We're filling their toolboxes with drills and saws and ferocity and joy.

These are the young women

who will go forth to build the world we all want to see.

(Applause)

So when I picture a construction site, they are the crew that I imagine.

This is my actual Girls Garage crew, the construction crew of my dreams.

This is not a pipe dream.

It's already a reality,

but one that we must name and nurture and multiply.

It is our job now to demand unconditional support for tradeswomen

in their quest to play a vital role in the construction of our world.

Thank you.

(Applause)