Women In Construction

The twelfth entry in filmmaker Jocelyn Riley's "Her Own Words" slide-voiceover series on contemporary women and women in history, Women in Construction offers five vignettes of women in hardhats--from a carpenter to an architect--sharing their feelings about the pros and cons of construction work. Electrical apprentice Taemie Saucerman says she has had to get used to being the only woman working with a hundred men, but she definitely likes being in a union: she gets equal pay for equal work alongside her male counterparts. Pamela K. LaRue, an architect, exhorts her two daughters to "take the math," a subject area LaRue wishes she had paid more attention to when she was growing up. And Carol Arness, a carpenter, while admitting that the work is sometimes a little heavy, believes "the average woman would amaze herself" when it comes to physical labor. In the construction field, these women are saying, women can find good jobs paying good money, and there's a lot of pride to be had in building something with your own hands. a good program which alerts young women to opportunities in an area which traditionally hasn't been thought of as "women's work." Recommended. (R. Pitman)