Contradicting male power and privilege: Class, race and gender relations in the building trades

Women have been entering the "last frontier" of unionized blue-collar work in much smaller numbers than was legislatively mandated by reform legislation such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It is also well documented that the attrition rate for women who have gained access is proportionately much higher than for their male counterparts. Yet beyond the popular literature, we know very little about the qualitative efforts of unions and the women themselves at gender integration in these areas of non-traditional work; or how gender integration in particular blue-collar trades either parallels or contradicts the integration of other groups such as African-American and other minority males. In addition, little is known about the ideological and social transformations that have taken place among male workers, union officials, employers and women who have attempted to cross the line into "men's work. " This dissertation reports on a historical case study and two-year field research among unionized electrician construction workers and other building tradesmen in a city on the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Responses of male and female workers (i.e. , journeypersons, apprentices and trainees), union officials, employers, joint-apprentice committee members, women's advocacy organizations, staff of recruitment and training programs were elicited through oral history, in-depth interviews, and participant observation. My goal in this dissertation was to assess the complex relationship between a major powerful construction union and its attempt to integrate women into its non-traditional workplace. In exploring multiple perspectives on the meaning of women's entrance into a male-dominated union and craft trade in the building industry, I hope to construct a socio-economic, political and cultural understanding of sex-typing in the skilled trades and an analysis of its reproductive mechanisms, considering factors, such as, fraternalism, male bonding, sex, gender, age and class ideology. One of my salient goals as an anthropologist is to provide a comparison of class, race, ethnicity and gender integration while elucidating the relationship between male dominance and trade union activism.