Build a Bitch
Exploring the treatment of women in construction, massage therapy, and in general... I hope you have your hard hat on.
Complete Tools
I have the common Toronto joy of living next to a construction site. Beyond the noise and aesthetic it comes with the added perk of catcalling.
Admittedly the workers catcall no more frequently than the echelon of nearby homeless men who love to call me a bitch. At least the workers try to hide their unwanted advances through charm. Last week, for example, one asked me to stop walking so he could compliment my pants.
Actually, maybe I would have preferred being called a bitch....
I don’t want to stereotype. Not all construction workers catcall. More accurately, men in construction aren’t different from any other men.
The distinction is that there are simply more of them in that industry. In fact, only about 4.7% of tradespeople working in construction are women. That number grows to a whopping 13% when the total workforce is considered.
For the women braving the space, it can be hostile.
A few weeks ago Canadian industry-professional Natasha Fritz got hit with a $15 million defamation lawsuit for speaking out about comments made on a popular construction podcast.
The two male hosts of The Construction Life had a guest who spoke openly about how “ridiculous” it is that you can’t whistle at a “sexy woman on the street” anymore. One of the hosts proudly announced that he'd "still whistle” at a hot woman, getting a laugh from the group. Nothing brings the belly laughs quite like harassment, amiright?
Encouraged, the guest continued on to say "I'd probably put my hand out a little bit ya know, try to reach or something." How charming.
Hearing the exchange, Fritz took to social media to shed light on their problematic language. She put the podcast quote next to stats about sexual harassment to illustrate the dangers of allowing this kind of discussion in a public forum.
Immediately the hosts went on the defensive and lawyered up. Their lawsuit claims that they neither "agreed with or condoned the comments made" by the guest. Lol okay. To paraphrase Tamisha Iman, you said what you said.
The lawsuit further claims that Fritz is "inciting harassment and wide-spread hate" of them online. Ironic, isn’t it? Their comments directly encourage the sexual harassment of women, but that's all fine and dandy as long as they aren't publicly held accountable. Only then is it inciting hate....The logic is immaculately stupid.
After much backlash, the hosts have said they will drop the charges. I still haven’t found any indication that they actually have.
Maybe if they took our attention as a compliment they wouldn't be so angry. That's how it works right?
Outtake from a Carrie Underwood video
Hammer Time
This type of behaviour is pretty run of the mill (do we count that as a construction pun?).
Back in April a bunch of workers were fired following a retirement party held on a Milton construction site. Videos were taken showing the workers dancing with a young woman without any masks, distancing, or decency. Reports say at least one sexual act is involved in the recording.
The moral implications are plentiful, but the underlying issue is the stereotype and culture this affirms in construction. For a field with very few women, a scandal like this one doesn’t show a narrative of change. Couple this with the podcast, and we don't exactly see a welcoming environment for young women to be graduating into.
And it's not like women aren't interested in the industry. At one point in the 90s up to half of all Canadian architecture students were women. In the 2000s, more than 50% of excellence awards went to female students.
Cut to 2017, and only 20% of registered architects in Canada are women.
Where the ladies at?
Many women leave the workforce to take care of families. The gender pay-gap is predominantly due to time off and she-cessions during trying times. That’s not the case for architects.
Most leave because of how they are perceived on the job and a lack of senior mentors. In the UK 47% of women who were asked why they left construction cited the “male dominated culture.” Moreover, the Canadian Association of Women in Construction did a survey that showed 92% of women had experienced harassment at work.
No wonder they all left.
As someone who works in a male-dominated field, the need to prove myself is intense. I've had professors call me 'princess', been hit on at company parties, had bosses assume I’m too meek to work with certain men, been told to “look out” for known creeps in the office, and I don’t generally participate in the same hobbies as my peers.
At the same time, many of biggest supporters are men.
In construction, where there’s an active culture of harassment, all of those stressors are compounded. The industry has a created a "he-man women haters club" that won't change with the addition of a few ladies. It's fine to advocate for more female representation in the trades, but if we don't establish healthy environments for them to be apart of, we're just sending lambs into the slaughter.
Workers with Benefits
While the landscape for women in construction is abysmal, there are female-dominated careers that are just as problematic. Massage therapy, for instance, is comprised of 71% female workers. It also has some of the most staggering statistics on harassment.
The University of New Brunswick released a study in 2020 showing that 74.8% of massage therapists had experienced sexual harassment by clients. 26.5% of that group had experienced an incident on more than 3 separate occasions.
Naked on a table seems like a vulnerable position to be giving rape-y vibes from, but there's logic to it.
Last month CBC broke a news story showing that unregulated provinces allow businesses to sell sex as "massages" and provide insurance receipts. Of the 40 businesses CBC investigated, 18 agreed to offer anything from a "happy ending" to "full service".
In regulated provinces, like Ontario, governments have a standard education system for massage therapy. In places like Montreal, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Calgary, however, they can belong to many different professional associations, meaning the standards for practice are highly subjective. Insurance companies recognize most institutions for claims, so it's not challenging for sexual services to slide under the radar.
Naturally customers love it. Why claim dental, when you can claim oral? The issue is the ramification these services have on the other massage therapists. Unregulated salons have created environments where clients expect sex, leaving women in the industry to bat away unwanted advances and requests.
Part of the problem is the lack of safe spaces sex workers have to advertise their business. In the pandemic sex work was affected more drastically than other industries. All the local haunts closed and most were not eligible for government support without records of their taxed income.
Beyond the legality of selling sex, there are heavy online restrictions that prevent workers from being able to go fully virtual. Legislation like the EARN IT Act has made it more and more challenging to maintain an online customer base. For many it would be easier to infiltrate the massage space than to promote themselves on highly censored platforms.
The other alternative is to find sketchy deals on the street that might, for example, involve hanging out at a construction site after hours. At least in a salon there are controls, appointments, and generally no video news coverage....
Happy Ending?
The underlying theme in both construction and massage is men feeling entitled to comment on or touch women's bodies. If that presumption didn’t exist, we’d have safer environments for women everywhere.
Ultimately we need to create an expectation of safety for our female workers, whether they be in construction, massage therapy, sex work or otherwise.
Easier said than done.
As of this week Bill Cosby is a free man. If we're trying to set an example of treating women better, this isn't helping. When we ask women to speak out about harassment and then free their harassers we're telling them that their stories don't matter. Your trauma means less than his comfort.
When I write about the plights of women, it’s rarely one thing fuelling my fire. The gymnast uniforms, the treatment of Meghan Markle, pregnancy in sports - each are infuriating in their own right, but the big picture is truly abhorrent. In the same week that boxer Mandy Bujold made huge strides for pregnant athletes, 3 different Olympic Committee decisions singled-out black women.
The world finally listens to Britney, then frees Bill instead.
This article is a snapshot of gender-based discrimination that happens across multiple industries. It's not comprehensive, it's not revolutionary, and it's not surprising. These are just a few of the news stories that build up my anger over time.
Brick by brick.
There are positive ways to build from here too. If stopping catcalling becomes a priority in the construction industry, maybe that would pave the way for more women to feel safe in the workplace.
The point is to always be fixing, but fuck, it's exhausting.
