Women Can Build, an impactful photography exhibit of WWII-era and modern-day strong factory-working women, aka ‘Rosie the Riveters’, has been extended by popular demand through June 30th at Los Angeles Union Station.
Since the exhibit’s launch on May 21, thousands of travelers, families and even a field trip of Girl Scouts, have stopped at the exhibit space in the historic Los Angeles Union Station main waiting room, and learned about these skilled and hard-working women who build our 21st Century transportation including streetcars, passenger trains, and buses. The Women Can Build exhibit premieres 15 photos of “modern Rosies”, photographed by Pulitzer Prize recipient Deanne Fitzmaurice, along with their stories of challenges and growth (in English and Spanish). They are displayed alongside never-before-exhibited historic photographs of WWII-era “Rosie the Riveter” manufacturing workers from the Library of Congress, connecting past and present.
The Women Can Build project’s website includes a new study by the University of Southern California’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE), revealing the overlooked contributions of these women, and decline in hiring since WWII.
Entitled “#WomenCanBuild: Including Women in the Resurgence of Good U.S. Manufacturing Jobs”, the study finds while women make up 47% of the total U.S. labor force, they comprise just 30 percemt of the overall manufacturing industry workforce, and 13 percent of workers building transportation equipment like railcars. Out of that group, most of the women are in lower-paying, more clerical positions instead of the desired middle-class building jobs. USC PERE also finds that the gender pay disparity is significant in manufacturing, where women make 74 cents for every dollar men make, more than other industries.
The “modern Rosies” featured in the Women Can Build exhibit work for global transit equipment manufacturing companies with U.S. factories, including Siemens, New Flyer Industries, Nippon Sharyo, and Kinkisharyo. In addition to the manufacturing “Rosies”, included in the exhibit are Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, California Assembly Speaker Toni G. Atkins, former Los Angeles County Federation of Labor Executive Secretary-Treasurer Maria Elena Durazo, and former Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority General Manager Dr. Beverly Scott.
To help encourage the global companies to increase opportunities for women on the factory floor in U.S. manufacturing jobs, the Women Can Build petition asks supporters to Take Action on its website.
Stacey Corcoran, an electrician and one of the only female railcar builders at Nippon Sharyo, says that 99 percent of the time during her 20 years in the field, she’s had no issues with her position, adding, “I’m only four foot four, I build trains, and I’m a girl. What more proof do you need? No matter what we do, we all play an important part.”
Recently promoted Ami Rasmussen, an interior assembly technician at Kinkisharyo railcar factory and U.S. Army veteran seconds that, saying, “Women [would] be surprised that they can do this! Better than half the guys!” She adds, “I participated in [this] project because…above all, I want to prove to my [two teenage] girls that they can do anything they put their minds to and commit to. I want to lead by example, to them and to other women.”
The USC PERE study, which is available at www.WomenCanBuild.org, finds that women want good manufacturing jobs. In one survey, over 75 percent of women agreed that a manufacturing career is interesting and rewarding, highlighting compensation and challenging assignments as the most favorable attributes. The survey also found that there is a lack of recruitment programs targeting women, especially those with advanced degrees. (Untapped Resource: How Manufacturers Can Attract, Retain, and Advance Talented Women, Giffi and McNelly)
