On Equal Terms
Thirty-five years ago President Carter issued two executive orders, part of a broad campaign to support equality in the workplace and open career opportunities. The orders set goals for roughly 25% of skilled trades apprentice classes to be filled by women, and goals (that increased each year) for hiring women on federally funded construction jobs. Three decades later, the actual number is an order of magnitude smaller—roughly 2.5%. While other historically male occupations have seen dramatic changes, the percentage of women in skilled trades construction jobs has remained virtually unchanged since the early 1980s. On Equal Terms explores this discrepancy between policy goals and policy outcome.
On Equal Terms is an extraordinary mixed media installation by artist, poet and electrician Susan Eisenberg—on view in NYC during October 2013.
Poems
“Hanging In, Solo (So What’s It Like To Be the Only Female on the Job?)”
“Remembering the Fire at Triangle Shirtwaist”
T-Shirts
From the start, the tradeswomen’s movement had an active culture. Female plumbers, electricians, carpenters, ironworkers, and truck drivers reflected on their experiences through poetry, film, photographs, books, a quarterly national magazine, music and parties. And, of course, T-shirts. These wonderful graphics give us a sense of the images and ideas—the labor art—circulating during the decades women have been organizing for the right to work at construction jobs.
Tags
The valve tags on the Stella sculpture were handwritten by tradeswomen in response to the question, “How have you been labeled on jobs?” Susan Eisenberg has been gathering these for more than two decades The tags evoke the contradictory, often lonely, experiences of a skilled woman working at a construction job site.
1st Midwest Tradeswomen Conference, 1991
Artist unknown.
Women in Trades Fair, 1998, Portland, Oregon
Artist unknown.
A Woman’s Place is in Her Union—NYC District Council of Carpenters
Artist unknown.
The back of the shirt reads: UBC [United Brotherhood of Carpenters] Women’s Conference October 3–6, 2002 Las Vegas. The image is from World War II, originally used with the slogan “We Can Do It,” made to urge women to roll up their sleeves and do jobs left behind by men fighting overseas.
Women in the Trades. Undated.
Artist Max Dashu.
Note the tools that make up the letters, including trowels, saws, hammers, calipers, protractors and more.
Women in Trades Career Fair. 2007
Artist unknown.
Women Building California and the Nation. Undated
Artist unknown.
Note the hardhat over the symbol for female, and the nails, screws, clamps and other implements that make up the lettering.
Valve tag
Detail from Stella sculpture.
The dozens of tags on Susan Eisenstein’s Stella sculpture were filled out by tradeswomen—writing down words they hear about themselves—on the job. These three read: “cute young thing,” “fat cow,” and “don’t belong here.”
Valve tag
Detail from Stella sculpture.
The dozens of tags on Susan Eisenstein’s Stella sculpture were filled out by tradeswomen—writing down words they hear about themselves—on the job. These two read: “MS Bitch” and “Blow Queen.
Valve tag
Detail from Stella sculpture.
The dozens of tags on Susan Eisenstein’s Stella sculpture were filled out by tradeswomen—writing down words they hear about themselves—on the job. These two read: “THE BROAD” and “too intense.
Valve tag
Detail from Stella sculpture.
The dozens of tags on Susan Eisenstein’s Stella sculpture were filled out by tradeswomen—writing down words they hear about themselves—on the job. This one reads: “WORTHLESS.”
Valve tag
Detail from Stella sculpture.
The dozens of tags on Susan Eisenstein’s Stella sculpture were filled out by tradeswomen—writing down words they hear about themselves—on the job. These two read: “SHORTY” and “R U HERE FOR THE MEN OR THE (easy) MONEY?.
Valve tag
Detail from Stella sculpture.
The dozens of tags on Susan Eisenstein’s Stella sculpture were filled out by tradeswomen—writing down words they hear about themselves—on the job. This one reads: “I’m Going to Break You.”
Valve tag
Detail from Stella sculpture.
The dozens of tags on Susan Eisenstein’s Stella sculpture were filled out by tradeswomen—writing down words they hear about themselves—on the job. These two read: “Big Mouth Dyke” and “She must be screwing the boss to still be here.
Stella
Artist Susan Eisenberg on Stella: Stella, the life-size figure on the ladder in the diamond hardhat, wears the Carhartt coveralls I wore through Boston winters. The tags on her have been filled out by tradeswomen. The faces that combine for her mask come largely from Tradeswomen Magazine, a journal that for 20 years linked a national movement of tradeswomen, many of whom were extremely isolated. I hope that Stella—and the exhibit as a whole—conveys the contradictions of being both armored and vulnerable, welcomed and assaulted, alone and in community. At the other end of the cable that Stella’s pulling in, she has a partner.
Photo by Susan Eisenberg
Stella
Students visiting the On Equal Terms exhibit and looking at Stella.
Photo by Emily Corbato
Stella
A collage of photographs forms the sculpture’s face. They are images of tradeswomen, taken from Tradeswomen Magazine, a journal that for 20 years linked a national movement of tradeswomen, many of whom were extremely isolated.
Stella
A collage of photographs forms the sculpture’s face. They are images of tradeswomen, taken from Tradeswomen Magazine, a journal that for 20 years linked a national movement of tradeswomen, many of whom were extremely isolated.
Stella
A collage of photographs forms the sculpture’s face. They are images of tradeswomen, taken from Tradeswomen Magazine, a journal that for 20 years linked a national movement of tradeswomen, many of whom were extremely isolated.
Stella
A collage of photographs forms the sculpture’s face. They are images of tradeswomen, taken from Tradeswomen Magazine, a journal that for 20 years linked a national movement of tradeswomen, many of whom were extremely isolated.
Stella
A collage of photographs forms the sculpture’s face. They are images of tradeswomen, taken from Tradeswomen Magazine, a journal that for 20 years linked a national movement of tradeswomen, many of whom were extremely isolated.
Stella
Photo by Susan Eisenberg
