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Will Chicago’s building boom boost women in construction?
That’s largely because female construction workers “face outright gender discrimination” and “extreme sexual harassment and denigration,” as Fatima Goss Graves, CEO of the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., said in written testimony to Congress this year. “Some of the behaviors include negative stereotypes about women’s ability to perform construction work; sexual tension injected into work contexts; intentions to reserve well-paid employment for men, ‘who deserve it’; and reluctance by supervisors and other officials to discipline perpetrators of discrimination,” she wrote. “The harassment women may face intensifies the already high risks of physical injury, leaving some women afraid for their lives.”