We are celebrating women in construction. Paula Resa, assistant director, Southwest Mountain States Carpenters, and Sandra Rodriguez, director, Sisters in the Brotherhood (SIB), have very different points of entry to the skilled trades, but their stories align in that they are women who have overcome hardships to find a career path within the trade unions they represent. 

Rodriguez is proud of her role as a single mother to her three children, “They turned out to be amazing human beings. So, I know what it's like to be a woman in the workforce and also be playing the role of both parents.”

In her current role, she focuses on empowering and elevating women and underrepresented groups within the skilled trades. She works with their various regional councils across the U.S. and Canada to build and strengthen their recruitment initiatives. 

Resa entered the trades on her 21^st birthday as a general carpenter where she remained for around 18 years. She wore a number of hats along the way, but she is now involved in training and teaching with the Southwest Mountain States Carpenters—a 12-state regional council program. 

“When I started back in the day, there were very few women, and so along the way, I finished a degree and went into teaching and training and I've worked in training and apprenticeship for about 25 years now,” said Resa. 

Here, they talk more in depth on their trade journeys and the many ways the Sisters in the Brotherhood program offers support to current and future tradeswomen.

The following are excerpts of our conversation, which you can listen to in its entirety below.

Floor Trends & Installation: How did each of you land in the trades?

Paula Resa: I was waitressing and a couple union reps would come in. It was really at the tail end of the late 70s when there was affirmative action still going on, and they were trying to find women to bring into the program. Before I knew it, I was literally on a job site with forms swinging over my head. 

I'm a little different because I had never been around the trades. I didn't have any brothers. I was not used to that male environment. So, it was quite the shock for me. I think that's what brought me to love doing pre-apprenticeship development curriculum over the years because I knew what it was like hitting that job site that first day and was literally Dorothy in Oz. It was very shocking to me. But I stuck with it. I worked mostly in San Francisco, Northern California, and then bopped around, had children. I've got two children.

I relate to what Sandra said, because when you are a working mom, your kids pay the price a little bit, and they're supportive of me and very proud of me. I just loved working with my hands. I tell a lot of women you've got to love what you do. If you don't love this, it's a really really tough industry to be in, but it gives back in dividends. I've built two homes. I remodel homes. My husband can tell you I'm a remodel junkie. So, it isn't just a career that stops at 3:30 or four o 'clock in the afternoon. It's really been a blessing in my life.

Sandra Rodriguez: When my path didn't start directly in the trades, I was working for the Bureau of Labor and Industries in Oregon as a civil rights investigator, and it was bring your kid to work day. So, I brought my 13 -year-old son to work that day, and a woman from the apprenticeship and training division brought her daughter, who was about the same age. She came over to my cubicle and said, "Do you want to swap kids?" I said, "Sure, let's swap kids. I don't know who you are, but yes, you can take my son for the day." So, she took my son with her over to the apprenticeship and training division. I kept her daughter with me all day. I taught her about civil rights law, and I taught her about how when calls came in, how we did intake for those calls, what kind of questions we asked. I taught her a lot about worker protection and her rights as a worker. 

While my son was over in the apprenticeship and training division, he was learning all about these great opportunities and apprenticeship. At the end of the day, when we gave our kids back to one another, my son was so excited about these opportunities that he had learned about. And he [expressed], “I know what I wanna do now. I wanna get into the trades.”

I knew that the trades existed, and I had investigated, unfortunately, some cases of discrimination, harassment-type cases in the construction industry. But it prompted me to go over to the apprenticeship and training division and ask a little bit more about the work they were doing. A position opened up, and I transferred over to that division after working as a civil rights investigator for several years. I started doing regulatory compliance on apprenticeship programs. 

One day, I was doing an audit on the Carpenter's Training program there in Portland, and I developed some relationships with the folks over at the union. I got a call, and they said, “Would you be interested in coming to work for us at the training center?” That work led me to the trades and that's where I saw the benefits and the power of equity and opportunity. And the more I worked alongside tradeswomen and heard their stories, the more I knew that this is where I wanted to be and needed to be, especially with my background in civil rights employment law. That's what led me to work for the Carpenters Union, which I'm so happy every day and so honored to be doing the work now that I'm doing. 

Floor Trends & Installation: Explain the relationship between the Sisters in the Brotherhood organization and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC). 

Rodriguez: The Sisters in the Brotherhood is a department within the UBC. It's dedicated to recruiting, retaining, and advancing women in the skilled trades. Our mission is to create an environment where women feel not only that they can enter the trades, but they can stay, succeed, and even lead within the trade. So, the Sisters in the Brotherhood, it's not a separate organization. It's an integral part of the UBC. It's fully supported by our union leadership, and then this backing allows us to drive real change within the organization, especially for our women members. 

Floor Trends & Installation: How is the Sisters in the Brotherhood and UBC connected to INSTALL? 

Rodriguez: SIB, UBC and INSTALL, they're all a part of the same ecosystem. We're all focused on high quality training, on safety and workforce development. So, INSTALL specifically supports floor covering professionals and SIB works to ensure that women are equally represented in those career pathways as well. It's about making sure that every woman who wants a union career can access the best training and support. 

Floor Trends & Installation: What makes women want to enter the trades first, and then second, why choose union?

Resa: For me, I was halfway through college, and I knew I didn't want to be a teacher, which is funny, because I ended up doing that eventually. I didn't really want to be a secretary. Back in the day, women had very few career paths that they could choose. I was always pretty physical with sports. So, when I found the apprenticeship [where] I got to build things and learn things and hang off of buildings and do all of these wild things, plus get paid really well for the day comparatively and get training that was free, it was a no-brainer for me. 

I think a lot of women that are interested in working physically, they're not happy to sit behind a desk. I just want to say one thing that I love to remind people, women for thousands of years, and I'm sure Sandra will back me up here, we've been doing heavy work for thousands of years, right? So, seeing a woman doing what we would call nontraditional or heavy work or physical work really should not be a shock to people. 

I found high-end finish work pretty early on. There was an artistic side to that. It was all about making the product look good, selling the product to the end user. I think women in flooring can do that really, really well. Then finally, what I tell people is eight hours a day is eight hours a day. So, do you want to make the maximum amount of money and benefits for those eight hours? I know I did. I was a single mom so, it was very important to me to always be able to take my kid to the dentist and not have to panic about that or take them on a vacation and really provide for them. The union has always been really important to me and provided that for my family. 

Floor Trends & Installation: Sandra, what are some of the stories that you hear from the women who joined the organization and have entered the trades?

Rodriguez: A lot of the stories that I hear have to do with there's not that pay gap that women see in almost every other field of work. Having that equal pay coming on board, having those benefits and really what it means to a lot of women is that they get to be independent, financially independent. I think that's a really big driving force for women to go into the trades, knowing that they're going to be able to take care of themselves and their children if they need to do that on their own or even if they're in a relationship with someone. It's still a level of financial independence that sometimes you don't get with other career choices. I think it's really empowering. 

I hear that sisters feel very powerful doing this type of work, working with your hands and seeing a finished product at the end of the day, or seeing building a structure that you get to see for years to come, being able to show that off and show your children what you did working with your hands. I think that's what's driving women in. Of course, the wonderful wages and benefits and the protection that the unions offer.

Resa: The other part to that, I'll chime in a little bit is safety. That has become a huge culture since I started way back when. If I'm going to go out and put my life at risk on a job site, I want to make sure that the companies that I'm working for, the people I'm working for, are following safety [protocals] and have been trained, right? So that's a huge part of the union as well. 

Floor Trends & Installation: Paula, how long have you been in the Sisters in the Brotherhood?

Resa: You called me the OG. It's kind of fun actually to be the OG. I believe we were at the First Sisters Conference way back when, and it was brought to the General President McCarron this need and request to establish this part of the organization and so that was quite a long time ago. (In 1998, the first SIBs committee was formed.)

Many times, women go out on job sites and you are literally the only woman out there. That can be very intimidating. It can feel lonely. Luckily, there were so many more good men out there, cheering me on and helping me than there were bad ones. But so part of the concept was also that women do need to support and build each other up and share stories and strategies on how to be successful in the industry. So, the Sisters' Chapters, that is part of what we do is to build each other up and support each other.

Floor Trends & Installation: What are some of the barriers for women entering the trades? 

Rodriguez: One of the main barriers is awareness of the trades—that this opportunity is available. Many women, especially young women, they're just not exposed to the trades as a viable, high-paying career option. They're put on that college track, and so if they're not hearing this during high school, it's oftentimes just overlooked as an opportunity. So, we're always talking about how the Carpenters are the best kept secret. And so, really raising awareness and getting into the schools, which we do through our Career Connections Program, just getting out there and getting to career fairs and high school fairs.

Women often face isolation—there's bias or there's harassment on job sites. So, those can be some barriers if contractors aren't actively working on job site culture.

Resa: It's been astounding to me that, when I started, I started to see the safety culture start and it's all money driven, right? If you start having too many accidents on a job site, then you can't get insured. So, it's a good thing to do, but it was also an economical thing to do. Now I'm seeing the last decade or maybe longer the whole culture idea of you gotta treat people with respect and dignity.

When I was being raised up in the trades, there were a lot of yellers and screamers, and I never understood it. It's funny because we've done a great job at the UBC talking about leadership and what makes a good leader. Because that's the bottom line too, right? If you're driving people away, you don't know the talent because you've got bad leaders or bad foremen that you're just squandering talent. It's been exciting to watch this slowly take hold and really grow. 

The other thing I'll tell the employers, because you're talking about barriers, it really is the industry itself in a lot of ways as well as women that don't see themselves in that role. But I like to tell employers, why would you ignore 51% of the population if you're looking for people? Because we hear from them all the time, where's the next generation? Well, you need to be looking at half the population because nowadays it isn't about how much you can lift. It's really about your talent and your training, and your attention to detail, showing up every day. That's not gender specific, right?

Floor Trends & Installation: What are some of the reasons they give for not hiring women?

Resa: Sometimes it's literally that I don't want the headaches and the problems. They're not thinking, “Well, I'm denying that person an opportunity because there's people on my job site that work for me that can't behave.” Sometimes it's the physical part. I can remember an owner of an acoustical company, which there's some physical stuff to that, but it's indoor, lightweight. And he's like, women just can't do it. And I'm looking at him and he's [around] 135 pounds and five-foot-six. Anybody, no matter their size, if they're trained right, if they've got people, “Hey, let me show you the right way to do that or here's another way you could lift that or move that.” That's not gender specific. That is just about talent and the will to learn. 

Shout out to Oregon because I don't know what the numbers are today, but they were pushed close to 17% to 20% women in our trade up there. I think a lot of that is that the more you see women that look like you doing that job, and they were also supporting and bringing each other in, “Hey, if I can do it, you can do it.” Not everybody's cut out for this, men as well as women. It is extremely physical. You have to be mechanically inclined. There are certain things that you need to bring to the party. Oregon is proof that with some support and bringing each other along, then it can be done. 

Floor Trends & Installation: What's on the horizon for the Sisters in the Brotherhood?

Rodriguez: We just rolled out a new program for the regional points of contact for the Sisters in the Brotherhood. We have 22 sisters that are appointed by their leadership in their areas to be a support system for the Sisters in the Brotherhood work. And our Department of Education and Training just rolled out an 18-month program. It's all leadership development. It mirrors our 18-month job site supervisor program, but it's specifically for the Sisters in the Brotherhood. It's the first of its kind. 

So, our points of contact are piloting the program. It goes into leadership, leadership evaluations, personality quizzes, and then power of intention, how to adapt to change, how to deal with stress management, how to be better leaders, how to build inclusive teams. So, there's all these components, and it's a two-year program. It's two sessions in 2025 and two sessions in 2026. Once we're done with that pilot program, we're going to start rolling that out on a bigger scale for more sisters to take advantage of that training. So, I'm really excited about that. It is in the pilot stages for some of our higher level leaders that are within the SIBs program, but we hope to roll it out to rank and file members in the near future.