Wire Women: Lighting It Up
Wire Women: Lighting It Up: What It’s Like to be a Female Union Electrician by Sharon Szymanski (Brooklyn, NY: Hard Ball Press, 2022)
This book originated as an answer to the question: Why aren’t there more women electricians? There are several books that address this question, but they were all written for adults. One of them, by Susan Eisenberg, IBEW Local 103, includes a dedication to “tradeswomen past, present and future.” Wire Women is aimed at children—our future electricians. The answer to that question is in the text, which is based on interviews with electrical apprentices and one journeywoman. The author, Sharon Szymanski, teaches in the state university program for the members of Local 3, IBEW, and is very familiar with this work.
The book describes the wonderful world of union electricians – the people who say – “let there be light” – and through their knowledge and skill bring all of us our electricity. That knowledge starts in the classroom, with five years of courses on electrical theory and other subjects, but also out in the field, as apprentices pair up with journeyworkers, those experienced electricians who have been certified in their trade. The system of apprenticeship goes back thousands of years and depends upon a seasoned worker sharing a skill set with those looking to learn their trade.
The text is sprinkled throughout with both humor and the joie de vivre that celebrates what makes these women love their work. “If electricians didn’t light up the ballparks, the baseball players couldn’t hit homeruns and the fans couldn’t find their seats or put ketchup on their hotdogs.” It describes the tools that are part of the trade and the many electrical devices that the work of electricians make possible, from wiring skyscrapers to wiring the city subway system. The book illuminates the everyday world by highlighting situations that kids are familiar with but from the perspective of the electrical connection.
It emphasizes the thrilling parts, such as seeing a building come together from the start—from studs to the revolving doors that spin. The pride in being able to show off a job to family. The book includes facts that most of us are unfamiliar with, such as the wires that run down the middle of the subway tracks to keep all the snow off – or another meaning for yo-yo—“no, not the toy” but a harness with a slow release that allows electricians “to work safely from great heights.” There’s even a special role for readers – the moms and dads and uncles and aunts and friends who share the book out loud – and get to explain some strange new words, such as gargoyles, galvanized conduits, and LED lights. There are seasonal touches, like the facts about the lights on the city’s Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center (50,000 lights weighing 11 tons!).
Becoming an electrician was unexpected for the women who were interviewed for the book, since “that’s not what girls did.” Only 2.4 percent of electricians are women. The rest are men, so there are not many role models for girls available for inspiration. Visibility for women working in the skilled craft jobs is still a problem, despite the fact that women have been working in these jobs for over four decades. The book describes the route of going from something that is new and hard to do to acquiring confidence and loving the job. It describes how being an electrician requires more than physical strength – it requires smarts. Reading blueprints and wiring lighting fixtures and so much more is challenging. It’s “serious business.” But it’s also artistic – choreographing bending pipes and making sure that the work looks good gives an electrician a feeling of pride and the payoff comes when “the magic happens” – the lights go on!
As the book describes, the women come from all kinds of families and backgrounds – they’ve been clerks in stores and childcare workers, graphic artists and all kinds of jobs. But the desire to do something different, more exciting, and for much better pay – a good union paycheck – provides the motivation that drives the women to explore this new opportunity. What makes these well-trained workers with good, man-sized paychecks and other excellent benefits possible is their union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
The book describes the concept of coming together in a union. The sisters and brothers who make up the membership benefit from working together to ensure these desirable conditions and to take part in making a better world. While the women interviewed for the non-fiction books about women in the electrical industry might have a hard time recognizing this world without warts and other major challenges, they would all appreciate the spirit that infuses Wire Women – a story that describes how women can do this job, can learn a new and challenging skill, learn to use new tools and can contribute to creating the thousands of connections that wire our everyday worlds – while having fun doing it.
Pushing back against the invisibility caused by having so few women in these skilled blue-collar jobs is an on-going task, and, as their sisters did before them – the pioneers who first entered the IBEW in the late 1970s, this new generation of union sisters is also eager to spread the word, and to be role models who can inspire future generations of women electricians. They are happy to advocate and organize toward this goal. The pioneering women who entered the IBEW in New York City organized. They called themselves “United Tradeswomen.” And they borrowed their motto from Star Wars – “to go where no woman has gone before.” Now, more and more women are lighting up the world – with grace and with guts. As the book puts it – “WireWomen are superheroes and our union is our superpower.”
The illustrations by the multidisciplinary artist Setare Arashloo are warm and evocative. They vividly create images that bring the workplace and the exotic world of construction to the reader. The book is laid out in an accessible and lively way by the graphic artist Denise Shavers. It also includes extra information, from “Did You Know?” facts to a page illustrated with tools and their descriptions, and a brief biography of each of the women who contributed to the project, from the apprentices to the author.
Reviewed by Jane LaTour, the author of Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City. LaTour is working to complete her second book, an oral history about rank and file reformers — activists in the cause of union democracy.