Women’s History Month Is About Power and What We Do With It
Every year, Women’s History Month comes around, and people take a moment to reflect. But reflection by itself doesn’t move much of anything forward.
What matters is what we’re building right now and whether or not we’re truly serious about it. That’s because in the building trades, this moment isn’t about symbolism — it’s about action.
Throughout North America, the unions of NABTU are doubling down on pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs to bring more women into our trades. That’s happening because we know something simple: If we want to create a stronger labor movement, we have to open the doors wider and make sure women can walk through those doors and stay.
That means real investment in mentorship, childcare, and safety. It means making sure women have the right gear and are treated with respect on jobsites. It also means dealing with culture, not ignoring it. Anything less is just talk.
“If we want to create a stronger labor movement, we have to open the doors wider and make sure women can walk through those doors and stay.”
Here in San Francisco, we’re doing that work with Sistas With Tools (SWT), an organization that’s not waiting around for permission. SWT is busy building real pathways for Black and Latina women into union careers. With the partnership of our friends like developer Fifth Space and contractor MWH/Webcor, SWT is not just helping women get into apprenticeships. They’re helping them stay in, finish, and move up.
That’s what solidarity looks like in action. It’s not statements or clever hashtags. It’s real, demonstrable support.
Let’s be clear about why this matters. When women are in unions, their lives change in very real ways. Union women working full-time earn roughly 20% more than non-union women. For Latinas, that gap is even higher — closer to 25% to 30% more, on average.
It’s not just wages. Roughly nine out of 10 union workers have access to employer-sponsored healthcare, compared to closer to seven out of 10 in non-union jobs.
That’s more than a marginal statistic. That equals out to rent, groceries, and doctor visits. In other words: stability.
That’s power. Period.
We’re seeing that power in leadership, too. We are lucky to have people like Theresa Foglio-Ramirez of Laborers Local 261, who’s pushing political work with our council and representing essential city workers. Kim Tavaglione, who broke gender barriers as president of the SF Labor Council, continues to fight every day for workers in this city. Osha Ashworth at Local 6 has helped to lead one of the strongest IBEW locals in the United States.
Honestly, there are so many more names that don’t get mentioned enough — women who are organizing, mentoring, holding locals together, dealing with issues on jobsites, and keeping this movement going day in and day out.
But if we’re going to be honest this month — really honest — then we also have to talk about something more difficult.
The recent allegations against Cesar Chavez hit a nerve. And they should have.
When I first read the reporting, I felt angry and shaken. That still holds. Reading what Chavez was accused of and thinking about what Dolores Huerta and the other survivors of his abuse went through saddens me deeply.
It saddens me because Mexican-American kids often exist in a cultural purgatory. They’re not Mexican enough, and not American enough. We have too few leaders to emulate as it is, and now we must confront two icons we were raised to model ourselves after, with one being an attacker and the other his victim. It’s heartbreaking.
Still, we must keep organizing, and that’s because our movement has never been about just one person. It’s about workers individually and collectively building their power — Black, Brown, immigrant, Filipino, and Mexican workers standing together and demanding dignity.
But dignity has to actually mean something.
If we claim to stand for workers, then that includes women who have experienced harassment, sexual assault, and abuse, including — and especially — inside our own movement. We can’t begin to talk about justice on the job if we ignore the injustice taking place in our own house.
Reckoning with that truth doesn’t weaken us, though. Quite the contrary. It forces us to be better. It forces us to live up to what we say this movement stands for. The reality is that women have been carrying this movement forward since day one, and often in spaces that weren’t built with them in mind.
If we’re serious about honoring that reality, then those spaces must change. Not later. Now.
And I’ll say this: I’m still hopeful.
I’ve seen what this movement can do. I’ve seen workers come together and win when they weren’t supposed to. I’ve seen unions change people’s lives in real, tangible ways. I’ve seen solidarity show up in ways nothing else does.
That’s why I still believe that this is the most powerful force working people have.
But it doesn’t stay that way automatically. It depends on what we do next. It depends on whether we decide to keep investing in women coming into the trades. It depends on supporting programs like SWT. It depends on how aggressive we are about moving women into leadership rather than just giving it lip service.
It depends on whether we listen when people come forward and actually do something about it right there and then.
That’s the hard work in front of us. If we take that work seriously and really open the doors — and change what’s behind them — then this movement won’t just hold the line. It’ll lead.