Professional Women in Construction, an association with only a handful of chapters around the country, has opened a chapter in the Washington region.
The National Capital Region chapter will serve the interests of Washington-area women working in the male-dominated industry, which includes architects, construction managers and civil engineers.
“This is going to be the organization that D.C. needed,” said Vinesha A. Clark, vice president of the new chapter and owner of the Gaithersburg-based Clark Construction Consulting Services.
“I have a bunch of [female] friends who are all involved in construction, and we’ve worked [in the industry] for years. But there wasn’t an organization here that really enabled women to go out and network.”
The local chapter will officially launch in February with a networking party, said Clark. The chapter has already lined up its officers and an eight-member board of directors and hopes to have at least 100 members by February.
Professional Women in Construction was founded in 1980 in New York to serve a growing population of women entering the field. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about 9,000 women working in the construction industry in 2003, a figure that represents about 9.5 percent of the total industry.
That figure does not include construction-related careers such as architects and real estate developers.
Today the New York chapter has more than 600 members. There are also chapters in New Jersey and Connecticut and chapters for Pennsylvania, Florida and Oregon are in the works.
“There seems to be a need (for the organization) because there are so many women in the construction industry at this point,” said Lenore Janis, president of the New York chapter.
“Men still own the industry. They dominate the field … [but women] are working in fields that they were not allowed in 10 or15 years ago.”
