[T]he number of women working in construction for federally funded projects in Vermont has increased 41 percent in the last 16 years.
In 2002, there were 49 women in road construction out of a workforce of 977 – just 5 percent. This summer, there were 92 out of 1,077, or 8.5 percent, said Lori Valburn, chief of the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s Civil Rights and Labor Compliance office.
Valburn said the low unemployment rate and the public discussion on gender at work have spurred more women to enter non-traditional jobs such as construction.
“We have started having a dialogue about gender equity and the fact that you don’t have to resort to same old, same old when you have a vacancy,” Valburn said, “that you should be thinking outside the box and focusing on the real competency that the work requires.”
Valburn is one of several speakers due to address the Vermont Women’s Economic Opportunity Conference on Oct. 13 at Vermont Technical College in Randolph. The conference, organized by the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will feature 23 workshops on topics such as entrepreneurship, communication, financing startups, and salary negotiations.
“Women have always faced difficulty in the workplace,” Leahy said Thursday of the conference, which he started in 1996. “I want women to know they are not alone, especially in a state like ours with a lot of rural areas.” He added that most new small businesses are started by women.
“This has been a discouraging couple of weeks with the Kavanaugh hearings,” he said. “I go there and I know I’ll be inspired. Anybody who isn’t probably isn’t paying attention.”
Lisa Danforth, an Essex-based communications expert who will speak at the conference, said her first workshop on communication filled up and the organizers asked her to do a second, which is also filling up.
“They want a more empowered way of communicating, they want to stop apologizing, they want to feel in control of the message they are getting across and having it heard, and not being seen as a bitch,” Danforth said.
The keynote speaker at this year’s conference is Corinne Prevot, who founded a business called Skida Headwear while in high school. She was recently named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list of young innovators.
Valburn said the AOT has seen steady advances in the number of both women and minority workers, partly because of its work with a training program paid for with a grant from the Federal Highway Administration. The training program requires bidders on federal contractors to hire women and minorities and provide training to help them advance.
“That program has been around now for almost three decades, and it has really, really changed the workforce in a big way,” she said. “Many people who got their start in the industry through this program have gone on to long careers in the field, and now some are at the highly skilled level.”
Training all workers in how to communicate effectively has also helped, Valburn said. But the number of women who enter the trades still lags far behind the number who enter other nontraditional areas such as IT, engineering, and other technical fields.
“We provide training on workplace respect, harassment, discrimination and the like. We want to raise awareness about how their behavior is perceived and what the impact can be,” Valburn said.
“Our contractors sit up and take notice because they and their insurers don’t want to be at the end of a lawsuit, especially these days.”
