Giving Compass' Take:

· The Mudgirls, an all-female crew, works to break down gender barriers and provides women with the opportunity to learn the skills they need to build homes.

· How are The Mudgirls changing the face of construction? How are they empowering women?

· Read about amplifying female voices in development sector.

Guiding Principle: We are a women’s collective and seek to empower ourselves with employment and the skills to build
 homes.

When the Mudgirls collective was taking shape, the concept of an all-female crew was largely a means of addressing the gender divide in available paid work on the Gulf Islands [of British Columbia]. Women were doing underpaid (or unpaid) gardening, home care, cleaning, and child care, and the men were getting living wages doing all the other jobs. On the islands, “all the other jobs” are about building things, moving things, and digging things. If a couple broke up, sometimes the women would actually have to leave the islands because they were unable to support themselves and their children.

We figured that if we learned how to build houses, we’d be addressing two issues, at least: We’d have jobs, and we’d have houses! The challenge: It’s not a straightforward thing for girls and women to access those skills. Women generally don’t grow up around tools and building things the way that many guys do. Trade schools and construction sites aren’t always welcoming to women.

Like women before us, we could have gritted our teeth and run that gauntlet of proving ourselves according to someone else’s priorities, but we had no interest in perpetuating the values of the economy in general and the practices of the housing industry in particular. (In case we haven’t said it already: The housing industry is an incredibly wasteful, environmentally destructive activity that results in energy-sucking toxic boxes that enslave people with mortgages. Boom.) We needed a new way to approach skill-building, and we wanted to put our values into practice, but to do it, we needed to carve out a niche that was ours alone.

Read the full article about this all-women crew by The Mudgirls at YES! Magazine.