The Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council, led by Business Manager Ryan N. Boyer, once again partnered with Bucks County Community College for Girls Ignite, a one-day career exploration expo in which female Building Trades’ members introduced young women to the many benefits of careers in the unionized construction industry.
Approximately 60 young female middle school students from the Bristol Township School District gathered in the community college’s new, state-of-the-art Center for Advanced Technologies facility on the Epstein Campus at Lower Bucks to be introduced to the basics in a wide variety of unionized construction industry jobs, including: sheet metal, insulators, finishing trades (painters, glaziers), electricians, carpenters, boilermakers, elevator constructor.
In addition, the students gained valuable insights into firefighting as a career option. Bucks County Community College operates the third largest fire school in the country, which provides both basic and advanced public safety training. Bristol Township Fire Department participated in the event as well.
Female recruitment efforts such as pre-apprenticeship programs, Girls Ignite, Rosie’s Girls and others are working. As of 2022 (the most recent national analysis), there were approximately 1.3 million women working in the U.S. construction industry, which accounted for 10.9% of the entire national construction workforce. That equates to a significant 53% increase in women working in construction over the past decade.
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