So in 2018, I started night courses in welding at Des Moines Area Community College. For three years, I studied different types of welding and during the day worked on a book about the communication between welding teachers and students. I wasn’t the only woman who became interested in trades work during this time. Recognizing the good pay and job security, U.S. women have moved in greater numbers into skilled trades such as welding and fabrication within the past 10 years. From 2017 to 2022, the number of women in trades rose from about 241,000 to nearly 354,000. That’s an increase of about 47%. Even so, women still constitute just 5.3% of welders in the United States.
When I received my diploma in welding in May 2022, I’d already found the place I wanted to work: Howe’s Welding and Metal Fabrication. I’d met the owner, Jim Howe, when I visited his three-man shop in Ames, Iowa, in January 2022 for research on a second book about communication in skilled trades.
Howe’s shop focuses on repairs and one-off fabrication, not large-scale production of single items. Under Howe’s tutelage, I’ve fabricated skis for the machines that make the rumble strips in the road, shepherd’s hooks for bird feeders, fence poles, and stainless-steel lampshade frames. I’ve repaired trailers, wheelchair ramps, office chairs, and lawn mowers.
Both my experience at Howe’s and my research at nine other fabrication facilities in Iowa have shown me—at least for the time being—that tradeswomen must find workarounds for commonly encountered challenges. Some of these challenges are physical. These could include being unable to easily reach or move necessary material and tools. Or they could be emotional, such as encountering sexism. As I explore in my forthcoming book, Learning Skilled Trades in the Workplace, this is true even in a welcoming environment like Howe’s shop, where I work with a supportive and helpful boss and coworkers.
Questions of competence
Being a tradeswoman means being scrutinized for competence. One of the tradeswomen I interviewed for the book told me this story about being tested by more experienced tradesmen:
“I remember them tacking together a couple of pieces of metal for me and saying, ‘Okay, I want you to weld a six millimeter weld here and an eight millimeter weld here,’ and I was so nervous because these are the guys that I’m going to work with, and I just was so nervous and I laid down the welds and put my hood up and the guy goes, ‘Well, goddamn, bitch can weld,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my god, thank god.’”
