"Hurdles"

 

I knew the Design + Make Studio would provide me with many hurdles to jump. The one I didn’t expect however was being a woman. Although the percentage of women in the architecture schools has grown significantly, women still only represent 41-42% of recent architecture graduates. Growing up with three younger brothers, being outnumbered by men is something I am used to. For the most part in school I have been treated as an equal. After working on the construction site, I quickly learned I am not.

 

The first hurdle to jump was gear. There is a list of things you need while on the job site, many of which you find out about along the way. Most of my male classmates already had construction experience in some way or another. This means they have tools, work clothes, boots, hats, gloves, you name it, they probably already had it. The frustrating part about buying construction gear wasn’t just that I was starting from scratch, it was the lack of gear options available for women. The market for women’s gear is extremely small. 9% of U.S. construction workers are women according to OSHA. Much of what is offered for women is either low quality, dysfunctional, or pink. After researching I discovered many company’s options for women’s work boots were scarce, and just smaller versions of designs intended for men. Finding a pair to try on in a store was almost impossible. The importance of a good shoe on the job site is great and women have different needs in a shoe than men. Walking around in a shoe that wasn’t designed for me didn’t sound like a good idea. Luckily Timberland provided a solution. Unlike most work boots, these were designed and dimensioned with women in mind. As a result, my feet are the only thing not sore after a day of work. Another issue I faced was work pants. Somehow the women’s fashion industry has made a general decision that women don’t need pockets. I don’t own a single pair of jeans with pockets deep enough to hold my phone. Some jeans even have faux pockets! Because of my in-depth research in gear I have found the few real solutions offered for women’s gear. I was now prepared to get my hands dirty!

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​The second hurdle was communication and knowledge. The initial question I had my first time on site was “What do I do?” I quickly learned that was the worst question to ask. If I was lucky, I received tasks the group desired least (scoop the mud out of the street, pound stakes in the ground, hammer off formwork, pick up trash and organize the site.) If not, I was met with a lot of “I don’t know”. Much of this I blamed on our lack of tools. When you have two hammers, one nail gun, a saw, and seven people on site not everyone can participate. But the real issue was communication. People that were already working didn’t want to stop and explain to another how or what to do. They already had a groove going, a system. Add on that fact that the only tools I’ve ever used are a tape measure, a screwdriver, and the occasional hammer. Every time I did something new, I had to be shown how. I had trouble understanding why there was so much frustration toward me until I had to show another female in the studio how to nail electrical boxes. I assumed I had explained it well enough and walked away. I came back to see that it was nailed in the wrong height and the grooves didn't line up with the edge of the framing. If I had just stayed by her and showed her how instead of just explaining it, we wouldn’t have to pull the box back out of the wall. But after we pulled the box out and I showed her how, the work went effortlessly. It reminded me of an old saying “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and feed him for life.” If my classmates would just show me how to do things, I could soon become just as good as everyone else. I learned how to be hyper vigilant about how people were doing things, get a brief understanding and then ask for the explanation. Also, the more I learned by watching, the less I had to be shown. Each day on site made me more intuitive about how things work and go together.