Transcript: Celebration of Women’s History Month

Hello, I'm Brittany Campbell-Turner and this is the Constructor Podcast, session number 24. Hello, and welcome to this episode of Constructor, the best way to build it. This podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. I want to help property owners foster trusting relationships with your project teams, help you to understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule in your construction projects and exceed your end user's desires. If you haven't heard my interview with Diana Pesone from Ted Muniz and Associates, the last episode, episode 23, go ahead and take a listen.

Also check out my interviews with Carol Hagan and Wendy Springberg. These are the women of the Constructor Podcast. As we wrap up Women's History Month, I want to take this time to thank the women who have contributed their voices and expertise in this podcast. They are inspiring and fantastic people. So today's format for this podcast is going to be a little bit different.

It's a solo cast where I would like to commemorate Women's History Month. As you know, International Women's Day took place on the 8th of this month. So if you were able to hear Diana's interview with me last episode, you will hear that she has an awesome perspective on women and the way they move through challenges. She sees herself no different from any other. You just have to do the work, put it in, figure out what needs to be done.

I love that perspective and I've definitely come up with that perspective just based on my upbringing. I'm really happy to know that there are other women in the industry that feel that way. It's really interesting. I really didn't hear about International Women's Day until 2016 last year. Quite honestly, I could have been exposed to it, but I wasn't really looking for a day to celebrate for women.

That may sound bad, just given the women's suffrage that we've had to go through. Rights for working, voting, and many other things. But just looking back on the history, and you can find more about it at internationalwomensday.com slash about. 2011 actually saw the 100th year anniversary of International Women's Day where the first event held was in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. In the United States, now Barack Obama proclaimed in 2011 to be Women's History Month, calling Americans to mark International Women's Day by reflecting on the extraordinary accomplishments of women in shaping the country's history.

It really surprised me one day when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go to the which, if you're familiar, it happened the following day after the inauguration. Justice inauguration, electing President Trump. So I told her, thanks for inviting me, but no. I haven't really been this quote unquote feminist and don't see myself being part of a March thing. And I was like, anyway, since it's the day after the inauguration, there's going to be a lot of Trump haters saying, we live in Chicago, it's a diverse city, and I figure that there's going to be some negativity and I just don't want to be around it.

And she was nice enough to leave the invitation open and said, well, if you change your mind, These are the people are going and let me know if you just want to meet up with us. She went on to say, you know, I've never marched before either. And I don't typically think about myself as a feminist per se either. But I feel like I've had the opportunity to be part of events like this in the past and I didn't take advantage of it. This will be the first time I do it and I'm excited.

Other friends of mine have done it and talked about people they've met at past marches and that they developed into great relationships actually. And she went on to say, some of those relationships turned into business relationships. So she actually was excited to just be open to the opportunity to meet some cool people and be part of history. Now after she said that, I said, OK, you know what, let me think about it and let you know. This was a Monday.

Now getting used to living in the city, for those of you who didn't listen to my burnout story quite yet, I moved to the city probably about five months ago now. So I'm getting used to it still and I decided to make a habit of picking up the Red Eye newspaper. It's a local newspaper that gives the lowdown of what's happening from local sports news to food to wine to entertainment to hot new spots, the reviews of which you should be checking out in the city.

And I felt like a suburbanite having lived in the surrounding suburbs of Chicago most of my life. So I didn't know where to look for non-touristy things to do. So I figured the Red Eye newspaper might be a good place to start. They have reviews and I could check stuff out, but it had been so cold to actually navigate through the city. So it prevented me from endeavoring in a lot of these suggested happenings.

But I came across the article. Mind you, it made it to the Chicago Tribune, this particular article. And you can find the link in the show notes. I'll leave it here. It was actually about the Women's March.

It was about the women who organized the march in Chicago on the day the DC march actually was taking place. So I started reading through. This was actually a global march. This wasn't happening in DC or Chicago. I had no idea that this global march was taking place around the world.

I didn't even think about any other country that this would be representing when and if I were to march. I only thought about Mercka and my experience in life in Chicago suburbs growing up. I was gut-punched. How selfish, uncaring, and closed-minded was I? Many Americans operate in this fashion and that's exactly what I did.

I fell into that category really quite seamlessly. While reading the article further, I learned about the women who organized the event. While reading, I realized that an ignorant American is not what I wanted to be, especially with now naturalized parents. Because I come from an immigrant family, I thought about the circumstances that overall immigrants have to face here upon arrival to America. Moreover, what situations people have to face in their home countries.

I must admit, the women who told her story and planned the woman's march for Chicago – I'm going to take a stab at saying her name – Mynalini Chakrabarti's story inspired me that day as I was reading it on the bus on the way to work. This made me feel connected to the world. I looked across over Lake Michigan and saw the faces of Indian women like Chakrabarti, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, women from Denmark, London, Sudan, Egypt, Guyana, Ghana, Nigeria, women from Malaysia, Australia, Germany, Iceland, Ukraine, Kenya, Colombia, Belize, Brazil, San Salvador, Mexico, any of these beautiful Caribbean islands.

I had been exposed to women, though, from these countries. Not because I'd been to them, but because they're here. They're here in America, and I've been exposed to them just based on being here in Chicago. Many of them, it's a shame. It's not the same here as it is for them in their countries.

It's been an incredible thing to hear their customs, their job expectations, and just the tradition when it comes to dialogue between men and women. In some places, it's very similar to America, and even more equal, but more often than not, you hear about just lack of recognition for the humanity of women in certain countries. Legally, there are some who have no rights, no laws to support them. So I feel so deeply about these women that cross through my mind's eye as I was on the bus on the way to work, imagining these places and the way of life based on the things I've read and experiences that were shared with me.

The feeling was so deep, I decided to go, well, to the Women's March. I told my friend that Friday, the same Friday I picked up the newspaper at like 9.15, I told her I'm going to the Women's March. Tell me what the details are. Where should I meet with you? We plan to meet in an L-stop or train stop nearby where she lives.

On the day of the march, I'm leaving my house. I walk up to the train platform and saw a bit more activity than expected on a weekend morning. There were women in pink hats waiting on the platform with signs. In retrospect, I saw some signs the night before. People were having sign-making parties.

How awesome. But I was clueless. Making them sign did not even occur to me. What surprised me most was that there were not only women with signs, but men with signs, children, families, going to this event from my neighborhood right there on my platform. I was just taking it all in.

The train approached, more pink hats, signs, and enthusiastic, quote unquote, feminists were on the train. I entered the train car and found a seat. As I was on the train to meet with my friend, I saw the train get packed like sardines. Stop after stop. Almost no breathing.

Since I had a seat and could relax for a moment until I reached the stop we planned to meet at, I took a moment to reflect and typed this idea in my phone. There's this thing in me that says I'm not a feminist, but I believe wholeheartedly that God created every person equally. We are beautifully and wonderfully made. So today I ask, why am I going to this women's march? I love people and I have quite a moral compass.

As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. So many women are coming together globally. 2.5 million people. So that's what I typed in my phone. This number, 2.5 million, is what would be expected in Chicago based on the RSVPs.

So my moral compass is based on religion. For you it may not be. Nevertheless, I believe in equality. You are a person. I am a person.

We should be treated the same. Case in point, what is a feminist though? I really didn't know. I did some research when I got home. So I'm glad I did that now I know.

I guess I am a feminist. All that means is you think everybody should be treated equally. So for my construction industry friends, I don't want you to feel neglected here. I am coming back around to industry discussion and later we'll also talk about technology, millennials, minorities, women. But we'll get into that in a moment.

Back to the Women's March story. I met up with my friend who was waiting there with a few more of her friends. We waited for one other to catch up with us and then we got on the next train. This was no easy feat due to the gobs and gobs of people. We actually had to split up and go into different cars.

I took loads of photos. I'll put a few there in the show notes. But a couple of my favorite signs said, equality has no color or gender. Prepare and power propel. Be the change.

Veterans for peace. Men of quality aren't threatened by women for equality. Valuable and powerful. Yeah, there were lots of anti-Trump stuff there too, which I was not happy about the negativity. It just so happens to be this was the day following the inauguration.

There were people though there of all ages, up to 70s, 80s even. Children with signs, all ethnicities, religions, and creeds. The event started out with speeches from women and men from our community. It was unfortunate that we couldn't hear very much of the speeches. I did catch the end of one.

It's here. Give me a pound of what the world has done in this city, in this country, in this state, in this city, and I will not go silent until you start to sign. Following the speeches, the march was meant to take place down Jackson Street, due west, away from the lake. After I got home, I realized the number of people toted up to six million that were in the streets of Chicago. So that meant we could not walk down Jackson Street.

People filled the streets. The route was completely blocked with people upon people. A new pathway was established, seemingly very haphazardly. However, there was enough law enforcement to keep the crowds contained. Peaceful barricades were up.

Simply to contain. And then the chants started. In preparation for this podcast, I looked up how many people work in construction. It's upwards of 10 million. The percentage of women is 9.1 percent.

Black or African American, 5.8 percent. Asian, 1.9 percent. Hispanic or Latino, 28.9 percent. Although these are the metrics that I found on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I was never really fazed by it. Not accustomed to it really, but I went to a university and had experience of being one of four women in the class and one of three blacks in the classroom, some of which had up to 100 people, others 20 to 25.

I was used to it. But was I? The negative experiences in retrospect really were quite subtle. And really thinking about it, probably unconsciously biased, I think. Age discrimination, I can say without a doubt, is probably the most I encountered, fortunately.

Most people still think I'm in high school or college when they first see me based on how young I look. I'm really fortunate, though, to not have very many things beyond these couple things told to me. That guy doesn't really talk to women. He doesn't know how because of his culture. Another thing I was told was, it's really nice to hear heels clicking down the hallway.

In that same workplace, I overheard across the desk, would you do a redhead? I was told not to mind that guy. I've been asked while trying to present some true recommendations on how to lay out some of the existing standards and make them more easily bought into by contractors. I was asked, why would anybody listen to the ideas I was presenting? Think about those who are following you and how that's going to impact them.

I really did think that they clearly misunderstood what my job entailed. I was really actually trying to help. Back to adolescent days, I was asked if I was mixed. I was asked this a lot as a kid growing up. Are you mixed?

Then they would go on to ask if I was black. Most of the time I would reply, I'm American with Jamaican parents. I would say, I'm Jamaican. Nice play on words. In middle school, they responded to me and said, oh, you're Jamaican, so that's different, so you're cooler.

At ages 12, 13, and 14, these children had formed opinions about their world. In the work world, opinions seemingly on how to refer to women were far from improved once I entered the work world. I want to stress that a place that should be neutral ground became an environment of distaste, hate, distrust, and abuse, taunting like a schoolyard, much like when I was in middle school. To commemorate International Women's Day and Women's History Month, I want to conclude on a high note. Let's talk about how we can, all of us, men and women, understand and address some of the challenges that our colleagues, partners face.

We talk a lot about integrated project delivery. We talk about building trust. We talk about collaboration. We talk about tech. We bypass the discussion, however, about general respect for fellow man.

Why? Well, we probably think that it should just be understood. I've come to understand that many people do not actively choose to be racist or against women. It comes many times with just an unconscious bias. They just never really thought about it too hard.

And we're familiar with people who look like us. Or we're familiar with the people we grew up with, whatever town we came from, whoever we went to school with, whatever places we frequented, whether it's churches, mosques, whether it's at the local football games, even if it's just our neighbors. It's easy to be familiar and comfortable with familiar. Right? I get it.

Believe me, I really get it. And I do want to challenge you as I challenge myself, especially with the way that I grew up just saying, let's just work hard. I have this awesome can-do attitude, but I have to challenge us. I have to at this moment in time because we have to value others' personalities. Not only valuing their skill sets, value their age, technology exposure.

Millennials are just so easy to adapt. We need to value their vibrancy, value their essence. Just value them. So how do you do that? Speak to them?

Ask them? More formally, do maybe a Strengths Finder test? Do icebreaker exercises? James Pease and my interview with him about IPD, we talked a little bit about icebreakers. Get to know people beyond their top layer.

Learn what they care about. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Those of you who follow Stephen Covey know where that comes from. It doesn't mean that you have to agree with every single person on everything, but understanding first hand is the first step. Lastly, consider doing something like the company I work for has.

I'd like to say here that I work for Mace, but I do speak for my own opinion and it's not necessarily reflective of the company's values or opinions, but I do have to just kind of speak about my experience that they carried out. Mace carried out a Women of the Future international training. I was slotted as one of the people to embark in this training and well, I thought initially it was going to be a big waste of time. I said, I have how many projects and you want me to do what?

But reflecting on the topics, reflecting on the training, we actually just concluded the trainings this month. Those actually turned out quite good. Some of the topics were 60 minutes to well-being, boost your self-confidence, step up, are you putting yourself forward, developing leadership behaviors, and guess what? They also shared an exclusive, lean processes training for the Women of the Futures group. I was stoked.

I thought that there was actually only one thing I was going to benefit from these titles really as I read through them when they showcased the training program and said, oh, okay, you know, the only one I'm going to like was lean. Boy, or girl, I was mistaken. With the company's push for diversity inclusion, I became aware of the global initiative for international diversity. And thanks to the membership that I was afforded through this training program, I was able to join LIES, or Women in Science and Engineering, an organization online, and at least my access to it is online.

I was also able to join the Every Woman Network. I started to understand a little bit more about what the company was trying to do. We were essentially being taught that there's a further need to expose the topics that may include an unconscious bias. I didn't know what that really meant before. Maybe to put it in simpler terms for our industry, it's kind of like how engineers and architects view each other in school.

I'm told by engineers and maybe have said that architects can't do math. Just kidding, all in fun. Of course they can do math. But I'll always check it. I got your back though.

I got your back. Okay, all in good fun. Let's just talk about sometimes how we see things and most importantly, listen. So what else can we do? Mentorship, coach a basketball team, a softball team.

What else? I don't have the time for that long-term commitment. Maybe volunteer a few days in a scenario you typically wouldn't be exposed to. I had a superintendent friend of mine that went and built houses in Haiti for Habitat for Humanity. That's something that you can do just to kind of look through a different lens for a few days.

Be part of a diversity group or support a social cause by donating. I will say this though. Those things that I just said regarding not having time, I urge you to make the time. Build relationships. We know relationships pretty much are the foundation upon which construction in this industry it stands.

We need to learn value though. We need to empower our men and women, our blacks and whites, our immigrants, our citizens, our world. So if you like this podcast and want to hear more of my perspective and more about valuing and understanding how that helps us to build certainty in our projects, build better relationships, lower risk, make sure we're under budget, make sure we're on schedule. All of these things feed into the common threads here that I talk about on this podcast or interview awesome people on.

So if you're listening to this podcast, please send me an email. Tell me what you thought. Brittany at Constructor.com. Brittany spelled Brittany. If you like the podcast, go ahead and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.

Also subscribe on my website just so I know who's listening. I'm not sure how many of you who are really listening. It would be nice to hear a little bit something from you guys. Okay. All right.

Well, enjoy the rest of your Tuesday and we'll talk to you guys next week.