Three Generations of Working Women

My mother, my grandmother, and me.

The women I work with take calls between meetings. They take a call from the car driving to a spring concert. They run a job site while a Halloween costume waits half-finished at home.

Mother's Day is here, and it has been on my mind. The more I sit with that, the more I think the story is bigger than one day.

Three generations

My grandmother never worked outside the home. She raised her children, ran the household, and built her life around her family. That was the world she was born into.

My mother worked because she had to. She and my father divorced, and she built a career to support us.

I chose to work. When I started out, that was still a real decision. Some women went to work. Some didn't. I picked construction, which was a man's industry then. It is still mostly a man's industry now.

Three women in one family. Three different relationships with work. Every one of us did everything at home, too.

What we carry

I cooked on the weekends, so I had quality time with my boys each night. I handled uniform ironing Sunday night, so our weeknights stayed ours. I helped with homework over the phone when I traveled. I worked through spelling words, one at a time until they had them.

The next generation looks a little different. Younger families share more of the load. The partnerships feel more equal. The women still carry the extras, though. They make the Halloween costume at midnight because their child changed their mind at the last minute. They take the call from the parking lot of the spring concert.

It goes beyond the kids. Working women take aging parents to doctor's appointments. They move closer to family when their parents need them. They are the ones who pick up when grandma needs help.

What work gives

People sometimes ask me why I work the way I do. The answer surprised me when I figured it out.

Work gives me a different kind of recognition than home does. At home, you are loved for the breakfast and the cookies. You are loved for the way you show up for everyone. That matters. Work gives you a different kind of acknowledgment. You build something. You finish something. You see a project open and you know you helped make it happen.

Both kinds of recognition are real. They feed different parts of who I am.

On site, plans in hand. The work I chose.

The women I work with

I think about the women in this industry every day. The architects. The project managers. The directors of construction. The coordinators and the executives. The women running departments and the women building their first careers.

They take the calls. They make the projects work. They go home and run a second shift no one on the call hears about. They show up the next day ready to do it again.

We have made real progress. Younger generations of women are coming into construction with more support, more partnership at home, and more open doors than I had. I am proud of where we are headed.

We have more ground to cover. We will cover it.

For Mother's Day

Mother's Day is for the mothers. It is also for the women caring for aging parents. It is for the women whose families look a little different from the picture. It is for the women in this industry who keep showing up in every way they show up.

Thank you for everything you carry. Thank you for the work you do at the office and the work you do at home. Thank you for paving the road for the women coming behind you.

Happy Mother's Day.

Michele

KRCrossing Consulting