On the "Build Like a Girl" construction site, girls rule
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - (CBS2/Fox28) — Miron Construction's Cedar Rapids site was a total girls club on Thursday.
“Iowa girls are tough Midwestern girls, so they're ready to do hard work," says Miron VP of human resources Dave Walsh.
The teens were trying everything from operating cranes to building a wall, 9th grader Brylee Severson’s favorite part.
“Most people don't expect girls to be on construction sites," she says.
That’s exactly the point behind “Build Like a Girl,” now in its fourth year.
“The whole idea of "Build Like a Girl" is to give girls opportunity to know what it's like to do construction hands-on," Walsh says.
Severson already has the building thing nailed down since she’s worked on construction before. That's not common.
“In Miron it's literally a handful on a project site,” Walsh says. “You might have one or two women and you might have 100 men."
While the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports around 10% of the construction industry is female, the number of women actually working in the field is far less.
“Less than five percent of the construction field force is female," Walsh says.
This is the first time they've held the event in Iowa, providing the experience to seventh through tenth graders for free.
“They're just seeing things that maybe they didn't know existed in construction and opportunities they didn't know existed," Walsh says.
One of the more unique experiences was operating a boom lift, which can reach heights of over 60 feet. It's not for everyone, but may give girls like Heidi Sankot a new look at her future.
Brylee's also laying down a solid career path as she learns to pour and smooth cement.
“There's nothing that's just a boy thing and nothing that's just a girl thing,” she says. “We all can do the same thing it doesn't matter what it is."
