Live Wire: Women and Brotherhood in the Electrical Industry

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Live Wire provides a full and exhaustively detailed history of the presence of women in the construction electrical trade, discussing and illustrating the enormous challenges that female electricians still face. By also discussing the mechanisms and impact of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1970s on the racial integration of the electrical industry, Moccio highlights the elements unique to the integration (or lack thereof) of women in that field. The book is capped by some theories on how more effective recruitment and retention of female electricians could be attained.

Skilled trades lack a certain societal transparency that other, more white-collar careers have; I suggest that most people could guess off the top of their heads roughly how one goes about becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but have no idea what the training and job description of an electrician or pipe fitter might look like. A good measure of the fascination of this book flows from the sheer novelty of the subject matter, which is due largely to the structure and traditions of the various unions associated with the electrical industry. Moccio deftly peels back the layers of history one by one, so that the reader is left with a solid grasp of the entire industry, its unions, and how they have evolved together, while still highlighting the thread of female experience throughout.

I would have preferred a much more in-depth exploration of specific ways to open doors for women with the industry than only the two final pages, but perhaps that may be outside the intended scope of this particular work. Although Moccio does indeed attempt to describe the basis of male electricians' overwhelmingly negative reactions to the entrance of women in the trade, her solutions don't seem to address those issues specifically. This leaves me wondering if any resolution can succeed that doesn't directly counter the underlying reasons why women are perceived as threatening to the industry's very existence.

Do not let the jazzy cover art fool you—this book is first and foremost a labor studies textbook, and it reads like one. Except for the short and uncomfortably pompous “Personal Background” section of the “Introduction,” Moccio's writing is very dense yet clear and illuminating. This is no relaxing beach or bedside read; the reader must do the work of paying close attention and assimilating all the complex networks, associations, and histories carefully laid out by the author. Your reward is a competent and empowering understanding of the struggles of women in a field that would rather you remain ignorant.

Written by: Kirsten Cook, January 30th 2010

Making Room: Finding Space in Unexpected Places

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:48:00 +0000

By Wendy A. Jordan

Taunton Press

Living in a small studio apartment, I was excited to look through the home-help book, Making Room. The premise of the guide is to create new spaces in the home you have, instead of moving elsewhere or adding on extra rooms. With hopes set high, I eagerly dove into the book only to face-plant into glossy pages of disappointment. While the pictures are interesting and fun to look at, this book is aimed towards the middle-to-upper class homeowners with kids and dogs. The suggestions are interesting to think about, however. For example, Wendy Jordan shows the reader how to make extra drawers out of your stairs. With some tools, wood, a couple of trips to the hardware store and lots of spare time, you can find a built-in space in your stairway to store your canned goods, extra paper towels and an iron. If I made drawers out of my stairs, I’m sure my landlord and neighbors would have a problem with it considering that I share those stairs with about eighteen other people. Plus, I don’t have time to do any of the major house-renovating projects that Jordan suggests. I have time to buy plastic bins, and that’s about it.

But I can’t be too cynical. It’s obvious that this book is not intended for the recently graduated, low-wage making and, probably, disorganized young person. Putting my socioeconomic status aside for the moment and pretending that I own a multiple story house, this book is actually a radical idea. Due to mass-consumerism, our culture believes that the answer to any life problem is to buy more. So what are you going to do with all of that extra plasma TV, drum set and kid’s toys lying around? Jordan’s serious suggestions are radical in the sense that she encourages people to make due with what they have. Stop adding on rooms and buying bigger houses, already! Every page is filled with detailed suggestions of helpful projects to find extra space in the home. An extra closet, for example, can be turned into a small office space. By adding bookshelves into the walls instead of buying new ones, the homeowner adds space and finds a place for all of her books. Maybe by changing our current approach to finding more space, our cultural approach to buying more stuff will change along with it.

And for those of us that can’t actually find the book pertinent to our lives, we can at least get a laugh. Jordan’s language is more entertaining than the projects she creates: “Before it was liberated from its confining walls, the kitchen in this small house was dark and isolated…a solid wall between kitchen and family room blocked social interchange entirely.” Oh, the horror! But seriously, keep this book in mind when you have the house, time and modern desire to find extra space in your home.

Written by: Chelsey Clammer, April 23rd 2007