1. The magazine for today’s electrical and systems contractor
Insights
WWW.IECI.ORG
JULY 2012
Innovation.
Education.
Success.
Innovation.
Education.
Success.
Recruiting, Hiring, and Keeping Employees
Girl Power—A Look at Women
in the Electrical Industry
How Do You Define
Workforce Development?
Recruiting, Hiring, and Keeping Employees
Girl Power—A Look at Women
in the Electrical Industry
How Do You Define
Workforce Development?
The magazine for today’s electrical and systems contractor
JULY 2012

2. 22 | July 2012 | www.ieci.org
s Bob Dylan would say, “the times they are a-changin.” A lot has changed during
a Baby Boomer’s lifetime: computers replaced typewriters, man landed on the
moon, the internet was invented, cars started running on electricity, and women grew
within the job market in a big way. No longer do we see women as just secretaries and
homemakers; they are our doctors, lawyers, police officers, and they even serve our
country in Congress and the Military.
Although women are hard at work across almost all industries, where do they stand
when it comes to jobs in the electrical industry and what will this mean for the future?
According the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), there were upwards of 691,000 electrical
workers in 2010. Of this number, only 1.5 percent are female. That means that there are
only approximately 10,400 female electricians in this country; you could take every female
electrician in the U.S. and would not be able to fill even a quarter of Yankee Stadium.
A
Special Feature
GIRL Power–
A Look at Women
in the Electrical Industry
By Laurie Montanus
From left to right: Kate Blanch, Heather Leas, Cathy Chek
GIRL Power–
A Look at Women
in the Electrical Industry

3. www.ieci.org | Insights | 23
Special Feature
Although the numbers and statistics of women
in this industry may be small, that does not mean
their contributions to the electrical trade are limited.
The Independent Electrical Contractors (IEC) is living
proof that women are becoming powerhouses in the
industry, and that this will continue to trend in the
years to come. Within IEC, a handful of successful
contractors are women. IEC National Board of
Directors member Janet Martin of Bret’s Electric
and Candy Branham of Branham Electric are just
two of the many female contractors who are active
in the association. Member companies all across
the country employ female electricians…SECCO Inc
in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, has three on staff!
Several female apprentices graduated from the IEC
Apprentice Training Program in 2012, and we will be
seeing one, SECCO’s Heather Leas, at the 2012 IEC
National Apprentice of the Year Competition. Leas
also swept the Central Pennsylvania IEC’s apprentice
awards with Top Grades and Perfect Attendance.
Women in Management and
Women in the Field
What makes people want to join the electrical
industry? Is it the same for both genders? The reasons
men and women alike decide to become electricians
or electrical contractors are about as varied as
shades of gray. Some people grow up knowing they
wanted to work in a trade, and some people just
happen to stumble upon it. Management positions
are different than working in the field, but women
still need to know the ropes of the industry, and
know to run a successful business.
Candy Branham,of Branham Electric in St.Peters,
Missouri, followed her husband into the industry.
“He started Branham Electric with himself and a
truck. As the company grew, we needed an office
manager/bookkeeper,” explained Branham. “Those
were my strengths so I joined the company.” Today,
Branham is president of the company and is actively
involved in IEC. When asked if her story was a typical
route female contractors take, Branham replied that
she believes many women probably enter the industry
with their husbands or families to help run the business.
Janet Martin, business manager of Bret’s Electric
in Frederick, Colorado, found her footing being in a
management position. “My path as an electrical
partner/business woman in the electrical industry was
initiated by working behind the scenes,” explained
Martin. “I perform a multitude of tasks such as field
site inspections, material procurement, and efficiency
planning as well as safety coordination.”
The contractor side of the electrical industry is
vastly different than actually performing electrical work
in the field. Although many women hold management
positions throughout the country, such as IEC’s
female contractors and Chapter Executive Directors,
women performing actual field electrical work are
not as prevalent.
A path to become an electrician or any other type
of tradesperson isn’t always a straight line.The women
who work in the field at SECCO all had different
experiences that led them to their careers, but their
reason for finally deciding on this trade were the
same: they liked working with their hands and didn’t
want a career that involved sitting at a desk.
“I’ve always been up and running around, working
with my hands,” explained Kate Blanch, a third-year
apprentice at SECCO. “I’ve always had an interest in
construction. I’ve always wanted to be able to take
care of my own house. Around the family, I’d take
care of the repairs and would build things. Being an
electrician came naturally.”
Journeyman Electrician at SECCO and 2012
Apprentice of the Year Competitor Heather Leas
echoed this feeling. “I knew I didn’t want any career
that wasn’t hands-on. I find it very rewarding to fix
things and put them together. I was also called on
a lot to fix things at home,” said Leas. Sitting behind
a desk isn’t for everybody, and this fact has nothing
to do with gender. According to the women, wanting
to be an electrician has nothing to do with having a
Y chromosome, and has everything to do with enjoy-
ing active and rewarding work that typically is not
found in an office environment.
Although there are a multitude of trades that are
far from sedentary, electrical stands out in that there
is variety in types of electrical work. This is especially
appealing for any woman, or man for that matter,
who does not enjoy monotonous tasks. “I chose to
become an electrician because of the variety of
work you can do…you can do data, fire alarms,
solar, wind. You never get bored because there’s
hardly any repetition,” explained Leas.
Women on the Jobsites
The reason why women enter the field is often
similar to men. But as the DOL numbers show,
women are a vast minority on the construction job-
site. With this variance, do women have a different
experience or are they treated differently?
“Absolutely not,” replied SECCO’s Journeyman
Electrician Cathy Chek when asked if she was treated
differently on the jobsite. Chek explained that she
has yet to feel singled out or belittled because of her
gender while at work. Even if that were to ever happen,
she explained that she could easily talk to her man-
agement if she felt uncomfortable.
Although women are treated as equals on the
jobsite that does not mean people don’t notice that
there are, in fact, women on a site.“I’ve actually had
men come up to me, shake my hand, and tell me,
‘it’s about time you women got into this field,’” stated
Blanch. The women agreed that almost everybody
they’ve encountered has been very encouraging
and supportive of having more women in the field.
For better or worse, men and women think and
see things differently, and these different perspectives
are beneficial for any job. In order to avoid a gender
war, there is not one trait that a man or woman has
that trumps the other in this line of work, but in a male-
dominated trade, a woman’s difference in perspective
has become one of the strongest tools in a woman’s belt.
“There have been times when one of the male
workers can’t get something to work and I’ll come
over and I can provide a different perspective.
Women are being much more accepted on jobsites
because of that,” said Leas.
Besides a different point of view, there are other
female traits that prove useful on the job. “Dexterity!
They’re meticulous,” added SECCO’s ECS Manager,
Bruce Seilhammer. “They have smaller, more graceful
fingers.” Smaller fingers can definitely come in handy
with tiny electrical boxes and thin wires. Of all the
advantages mentioned that women bring to the
industry,this was the first mention of anything physical.
On the other side of the coin, women in the field
do run into certain challenges. Physical strength is
one of the largest obstacles that women face while
on the jobsite. Scientifically speaking, men’s upper
body strength surpasses women’s, and this can
often come in play when doing typical construction
work such as lifting heavy objects,bending conduit,etc.
“The only thing I’ve ever had difficulty with was
pulling heavy wire,” said Chek.“It’s a lot of weight so
I have to bow out because I cannot physically do it. It
makes me feel about this big [as she puts her thumb
and index finger together to demonstrate a small
amount],but for the most part,I can do anything else.”
“There are just some things you don’t want to
send the three of us (Leas, Blanch, and Chek) to do,”
agrees Leas. “Having us try to put up heavy piping
would be difficult. We would get it up there, it’d just
take longer.”
This doesn’t necessarily have to be a gender-
specific shortcoming, stated Seilhammer. There are
plenty of men in the field who would also have a hard
time bending thick pipe. Luckily, this “weakness” is
something that is not permanent. Candy Branham
encouraged her female electricians to join a gym
and focus on strength training. “Strength is definitely
an issue,but with strength training,I know women can
perform at the same level as their male counterparts,”
stated Branham.
What the Industry Offers Women
Not only can women offer the electrical industry
something special, but the industry has a lot of offer
women. In this economy, finding a career with job
security is like finding the Holy Grail. Even though
employment for construction jobs is still down, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that electricians
will have a 23 percent growth rate between 2010
and 2020, which is higher than the national average
of 14 percent.This high growth in electrical jobs shows
that there is a need for this type of labor, hence, job
security. Continued on page 25.

4. www.ieci.org | Insights | 25
Leas also has another reason why she feels a
career in electrical work is safe, “You can’t outsource
an electrician,” she said.“These jobs aren’t going any-
where. Things will always need to be built, buildings
will need to be retrofitted, and people will always
break stuff so there’s always going to be a demand.
That’s job security. What’s not to love about that?”
Electricians who go through an apprentice training
program also have stability in that they can easily
find jobs, and most are even employed while going
though training.
The rapid change in technology is also opening
up new doors for electrical work; solar, distributed
wind, data, and electric vehicle (EV) charging station
installations are just a few of the newer avenues in
which women can get involved. As more people
adopt these new technologies, the industry will need
skilled workers who are able to perform this type of
work. Women who are able to perform these tasks
will stay happily employed.
Electrical contractor Candy Branham agrees;
“Whether in management positions or field positions,
women have the ability to earn excellent pay and
benefits while sharing in a sense of belonging to a
team that is building their community’s future.”
“Women working in a non-traditional trade offers
more opportunity for paid training, wage advancement,
benefits, and career advancements,” explained Janet
Martin. “The electrical industry opens many doors,
which leads to various, hands-on office based or
sales driven careers.” Just because a woman starts
in the field, does not mean she needs to stay in the
field her entire career. As Martin related, the industry
provides much room for advancement beyond just
moving up within the field. Electricians can go on to
be estimators or project managers; they can even
go to extra schooling to become electrical engineers
if they are interested in design. As long as the elec-
trician is driven, the sky is the limit for advancement
opportunities.
Workforce Development
Women and electrical work seem to be a desirable
fit, yet there is still a small number of women in the
trade. There could be a number of reasons for this
statistic. Some women in the industry still feel that
although times are changing, there is still a stigma
related to women in the trades.Women are still seen
as being in more pink-collar trades such as chefs,
cosmetologists, nurses, etc. When mentioning a
female tradesperson, the archetypal image may not
involve a woman with a tool belt and a hard hat.
This stigma starts early too. In high school
especially in the past, men typically went to wood
working class or some equivalent, and women went
to home education. “I would definitely say there is
a stigma. There is a pressure even in high school to
push the trades on guys. In school, I really wanted
to take shop and was told that girls don’t take those
kinds of classes,” relates Leas.
Although electrical is still considered a male-
oriented industry, women do notice a change. “I’ve
seen way more women in the field than I ever
expected to see,” said Blanch. Many believe with
more recruiting of young women, we will begin to
see more females on the job.
Katie Koetters of Denier Electric in Cincinnati,
Ohio, is a firm believer that girls should be made
aware that nontraditional careers are both realistic
and lucrative options for women. Koetters, along
with Licensed Journeyman Rachel Coffey and Vicki
Elam (all of whom are with Denier Electric) donate
their time to an organization called Rosie’s Girls.
Rosie’s Girls is a three-week, summer day camp for
girls in the middle school age bracket. This day
camp doesn’t involve canoeing or singing around a
fire; the girls learn basic trade skills such as carpentry,
welding, engineering, auto technology, firefighting,
and electrical wiring.
Koetters and the rest of the Denier crew help
the girls in the electrical wiring portion of the camp,
where the girls learn to wire a receptacle and build
and wire their very own lamps. Koetters also noted
that when wiring the receptacles, the girls were able
to get them to work on the very first try; a feat that
does not come easily.
“A lot of the girls say the electric portion is their
favorite part,” said Koetters. “The reason I’m involved
and I think this program is so important is because
they (the girls) put so much heart and soul into
everything.They have so much pride in what they’ve
created.” Programs similar to Rosie’s Girls are
extremely important to help young women not only
become aware of nontraditional jobs, but to get
them excited about doing things they love, which
they can apply to their futures.
As noted throughout this article, women are
making some major strides in the electrical industry,
both on the management and the field side. Women
can bring a fresh prospective and new skills to the
male-dominated trade, and in turn, the industry has
much to give women.
They have certainly come a long way and the
industry is changing as more women enter the field.
However, there is still room to improve. As the baby
boomers retire, the industry must work hard to find
skilled workers to replace them.Workforce development
should aim at getting women interested in the
trades, and more programs like Rosie’s Girls, will be
needed. Bottom line: let women know they can be
electricians too!
“I wish people had told me to consider this
(becoming an electrician) before college,” said
Blanch. “I went to school and now I have a degree
that I can’t use. If I’d known I could be an electrician
first, I wouldn’t be $25,000 in debt.”
The female electricians of SECCO do have a bit
of advice to give to young women who are considering
a job in the electrical industry. Leas, advises, “If you’re
not afraid to get your hands dirty, then definitely
consider this field.”
“I hope to see a little bit more women in the
field; women who would like to do it and are not
afraid to try it,” agrees Chek. “I’m 44 years old and
I just got into the field a few years ago, so don’t let
age stop you.”
Laurie Montanus is the director of communications
for IEC National and the managing editor of Insights.
She is responsible for managing the content for the
IEC newsletters Electrical Matters and IEC
Extension, and also spearheaded the association’s
social media efforts. She has a bachelor’s degree in
Corporate Communications from Elon University.
Continued from page 23.
Special Feature
Children at Rosie’s Girls learn to wire a lamp and a receptacle.