Review: Two promising young artists at Corey Daniels Gallery

Museum And Gallery

Interview: Artist, construction worker Susan Eisenberg

On Equal Terms: Women in Construction 30 Years & Still Organizing at the Adams Gallery at Suffolk University.

By IAN SANDS | February 9, 2009

On Equal Terms: Women in Construction 30 Years & Still Organizing

In 1978, the federal government under President Jimmy Carter put forth timetables and goals aimed at increasing the number of women and minorities in the construction industry. The Department of Labor predicted that under the new federal guidelines, the percentage of women in the construction industry would grow exponentially, so much so that by the year 2000 a quarter of the total construction workforce would be women.

The estimate was so far off base, it didn't even come close to reality. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of women in the construction and extraction industry in 2007 averaged out to a measly 2.7 percent. In Boston, the figures are even more dismal. A recent Transportation Equity Network study found that in 2006, the percentage of women in this city's construction industry equaled just one percent.

In order to shine some light on the inequality – as well as call attention to the strong, talented tradeswomen who wire this country's buildings, lay out piping systems, and fabricate metals – the local artist and poet Susan Eisenberg, herself a pioneering tradeswoman who came into the business in 1978, has unveiled On Equal Terms: Women in Construction 30 Years & Still Organizing at the Adams Gallery at Suffolk University. The exhibit features poetry, found materials, sculpture, audio, and photography and was previously on display at the Women's Studies Research Center gallery at Brandeis University, where Eisenberg is a visiting artist scholar.

On Equal Terms highlights how unaccommodating the construction industry has been towards women, then and now. One of the pieces, a life-size bathroom shack outfitted with crude, misogynistic graffiti, calls to mind the difficulties women have had in obtaining access to better bathroom facilities on the job. But the exhibit is not without its lighter moments, from an area where gallery goers can try on hard-hats in the mirror, to a collection of T-shirts from women's trade groups across the country. We chatted with the artist by phone last week about the contradictory nature of her exhibit as well as her own experience as a trailblazer in her industry during the Seventies.

Stella

Much of the work you've done over the course of your career as a poet and artist has been to do with labor issues. Tell me about how you got on this tack.
I come out of the construction industry. I worked 15 years as an electrician on union job sites in this area. I came into the industry in 1978 at the beginning of affirmative action when there were high expectations that women would begin to enter the trades, and that the industry would change. That really didn't happen.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | next >

Topics: Museum And Gallery , Jimmy Carter, Rudolph Giuliani, Brandeis University, More

| More

view all

[ 05/28 ] Bela Fleck + Marcus Roberts Trio @ Stone Mountain Arts Center

[ 05/28 ] Downeast Singers: "Peace Music" @ Camden Opera House

ARTICLES BY IAN SANDS

POWER TO THE PEOPLE | November 04, 2009
Painted portraits are, as evidenced by the many on display inside Boston’s world-famous art galleries, a window into the world of royalty, politicos, and other spectacularly coiffed assholes from centuries ago.

LESS THAN ZERO | October 10, 2009
Three years ago, Russell Freeland had what most would consider a settled life. Just two years later, though, Freeland was hungry, exhausted, and homeless, trying to survive in Austin, Texas.

WHEELS IN MOTION | September 02, 2009
David Branigan, who recently returned to town after more than a year in Koforidua, in Eastern Ghana, says what he missed most about Boston is the "efficiency." That might come as a shocker for those of us here who have ever waited for the Number 66 bus in the thick of winter.

APARTMENT AID | August 31, 2009
Back from an arduous vacation full of nail-biting beer-pong battles and vigorous Wii tennis matches, you enter the dilapidated dorm or apartment where you'll be spending the next year doing much the same.

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO LOCK | August 05, 2009
It's too bad Skip Gates didn't have Schuyler Towne's cell number on that fateful day last month. If he did, the Somerville-based lockpicking champ likely could have gotten in to the good professor's home in no time at all, and a national controversy (and international beer summit) might have been averted.