DMV construction camp teaches girls to build walls, tables, the future.

Jun 17, 2024

There’s a critical shortage of construction workers in the United States, and the solution might be found in a 12-year-old girl named Lulu.

“When I was little, I always thought I wanted to build,” said Lucia “Lulu” Silva Santy, as she took a break from the mortar work on her brick wall, which was almost three feet high. “But all I see are boys building. And I wonder ‘who will I talk to if I go into building?’”

There’s a mason with tattooed arms and pearl earrings she can talk to. Or a historic renovation expert whose hard hat barely contains her spiral curls. Or the former wedding planner who would rather see a building go up than buffet menu drama break everyone down.

These are some of the women who make up almost 11 percent of our nation’s massive construction industry. And they volunteered at a summer camp run by the National Association of Women in Construction at Edison High School in Maryland this month to introduce a field hungry for workers to girls who might not see themselves in hard hats.

For a week, the girls did electrical work, plumbing and carpentry. They routed, leveled, drilled and sawed. For some, it may have been the spark to change their lives. For others, it may be the experience that makes them forever comfortable around power tools and mechanics in their homes, a lifetime of empowerment after a week off Instagram.

“We want to inspire girls to be the next generation here,” said Haley Moyers, a former wedding planner who is much happier now working in construction. She’s the director of workforce programs and initiatives at Associated Builders and Contractors, and they’re feeling the scarcity of builders in a nation that won’t stop building. According to the association’s metric combining federal labor statistics and a projected increase of $1 billion in new construction, the construction industry will be short 650,000 workers this year.

Meanwhile, our college-obsessed education culture does little to value and promote the skilled trades. Even though all the women I met at the camp went to college, the path to construction after college was never clear or encouraged.

It’s no secret that our culture is toxic to the trades. As we’ve lost manufacturing and industry jobs to companies overseas, we’re facing a severe shortage of workers who earn a living and solve problems with their heads, hands and backs right here on American soil.

“These are the jobs that stay here,” said Naomi Doddington, a project manager and historic preservationist at Consigli Construction who helped with the camp.

Doddington, the one with the curls, always makes it a point to wear her hard hat and construction gear anytime she’s going between job sites so that girls out in the world can see her, can visualize a woman in this line of work.

“It’s all about getting to girls when they’re little. Like 8, 9 years old, putting the idea in their heads that this can be for them,” she said.

Her jobs are high profile. She’s the one leading construction teams at the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, Meridian Hill. And she loves when the girls see her in job site battle rattle, when she knows she’s keeping bias from being baked into their brains.

“They say, ‘Mommy! Mommy! That’s a girl construction worker!’” she said. “Because by the time they’re seniors in high school, it might be too late.”

That’s why the camp is for girls in middle school.

It was a revelation for Lulu.

“She came home and painted my office,” her mom, Andrea Santy said. “She had it all, the gloves, the safety glasses, the gear. ‘Mom, this is it’, she told me. This is what she loves to do.”

And for learners like Lulu, who goes to a private school that specializes in students with dyslexia, seeing a way their skills can translate into lucrative jobs and rewarding careers is important.

The camp held in Maryland this month was free. And some of the girls found themselves there because it was a good way for parents to fill summer vacation days.

“I really like using my hands,” said Prachi Tyagi, a 12-year-old from Rockville whose parents are scientists and who was surprised how much she enjoyed building a picnic table. She’s not sure about going into construction, but she liked learning about the process, about problem solving.

Elanor Lantner was aglow.

“I’m not sure what I want to do with my life, but I love doing things with my hands,” the 14-year-old said. “I really like heights, so maybe I can be a crane operator!”

Elanor loved the day they visited a building job site. She was thrilled when they were high up among the rebar and beams, where they posed for photos with their mentors, the women who showed them around.

“I knew this was male-dominated,” Elanor said. “But I didn’t know there were this many women doing it.”

Michelle Schwartz, the tattoo and pearls woman, loved seeing the girls light up. She could see the wheels turning in their heads, imagining the world — their futures — differently.

Schwartz used to be in food service before she became an iron worker, then a mason. She believes technology will be the t key to getting women into construction. Not robots doing the building — we’re not there yet. The great equalizer will be robotic muscle — technology to do the heavy lifting that’s a barrier to so many.

“An average mason lifts 4,500 pounds a day,” she said. Using robotic assists in lifting bricks and beams opens the industry to people of all body types.

And that can change one of the most vexing problems for women in the American workforce — wages.

The National Association of Women in Construction said data from the U.S. Labor Department shows that women in construction make 96 cents for every dollar a man makes. Across all industries and over nearly two decades, women earn 82 percent of what men earn for doing the same job, according to the Pew Research Center.

But that’s not really on the minds of middle-schoolers. The girls were thrilled with the discovery of their own skills and capabilities. Their place in a world they may have never envisioned themselves.

When their wall was done, one group of girls began taking selfies with it.

“No, I don’t want that,” Lulu said, waving the people away from it and backing up so their wall — plumb and clean, with the level’s bubble exactly in the middle — will be the only thing in this summer photo.