<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/americas-green-boom-demands-more-electricians-and-women-are-stepping-up/>
"As a child, Cora Saxton liked to make things: forts, whittled wood carvings, a
flying saucer even, so when she became an electrician, at 49, it felt like a
perfect fit.
“I like the puzzle-solving and being able to look back at the end of the day
and see the physical result of your hard work,” she said.
This made it easier to bear some of the indignities — “subtle challenges,” she
called them — of working in an overwhelmingly male field. “Little stuff, like
people walking by you to find the boss on the job”— not realizing she was the
boss, having tools and ladders taken out of her hands by pushy colleagues. “I
call it roostering,” she said.
Saxton, who now works at the California nonprofit GRID Alternatives, thinks she
had it pretty easy compared to other women in her field. She’s heard horror
stories about threatening notes left in lockers, tools being stolen and
destroyed — “even people getting their hard hats peed in,” she said.
The trades in general and electrical work specifically are overwhelmingly male.
Only two percent of electricians are women, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS). It’s also a sector facing a massive labor shortage as the
country looks to transition away from fossil fuels and toward electrifying cars
and buildings.
According to Rewiring America, an electrification nonprofit, the United States
will need one million more electricians to make updates like installing solar
panels, heat pumps and electric vehicle charging stations to help the country
meet its climate goals.
That is a lot of job opportunities for something so badly needed. As author
and journalist Bill McKibben put it in an interview with the New York Times:
“If you know a young person who wants to do something that’s going to help the
world and wants to make a good living at the same time, tell them to go become
an electrician.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
