Home Makers

Linda Larsen of Silver Lake didn’t set out to hire a crew of female painters. But when she asked neighbors for a recommendation, she kept hearing about Peggy McCloud and her firm Jill of All Trades. So she gave them a try.

Many cans and rollers later, Larsen couldn’t be happier.

“They really do listen,” said Larsen, a private investigator.

“It’s not that men are unwilling to listen, but women try to match your needs,” she said. “They do a lot of color consulting.

“And there’s more flexibility having women tradespeople in the house. The painters are usually there at 6 or 7 in the morning, and you don’t have to feel uncomfortable walking around in your pajamas.”

Larsen is only one of many who have discovered the small sisterhood flourishing within the traditionally male building and contracting industry. Those who hire women tradespeople say their choices have little to do with female chauvinism or sexual stereotyping.

Some say the woman is simply the best person for the job. Others have the perception--right or wrong--that the average woman is more organized, neat, timely, quiet and detail-oriented.

And for yet others, such as mothers with small children dreading the work crews that invade houses for days on end, women tradespeople may provide a kind of intangible comfort level they don’t feel with men.

Nancy Smith, who buys and restores vintage homes with her Realtor husband, Kyle, is a big fan of women tradespeople and makes no bones about why.

“Men don’t show up when they say they will,” she said. “They don’t call. Women are more reliable and responsible.”

Isn’t that a little sexist?

Smith doesn’t think so.

“Some contractors can make you nuts. I have completion anxiety,” she said. “I don’t have the luxury to wait around. When you buy and renovate and sell old houses, it has to be finished when it’s supposed to.

“Plus I feel comfortable having them in the house. They’re quiet. There’s not a lot of male rowdiness. I wish I had more women to use, particularly in electrical and plumbing.”

It is possible to make some generalizations about women in the trades:

* Most didn’t set out to work in this field, but fell into it by accident or circumstance.

* They rely heavily on word-of-mouth for new business.

* A large percentage of their clients are other women, gay men and lesbians, and creative types, especially in the entertainment industry.

Numbers of Women Remain Small

That’s not to say that women contractors have it easy. Their numbers remain small and have declined since 1991, when, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women made up 11.4% of the building work force. Today, women account for only 9% of workers in the building industry, even though they make up 46.1% of the American work force overall.

At the same time, demand for building trade professionals is rising. The U.S. Labor Department estimates that a quarter of a million additional workers will be needed each year to keep up with demand.

Aware of the shortages, such groups as the Bricklayers, Masons and Plasterers’ International Union and International Masonry Institute have stepped up recruitment of women, and colleges, including the University of Iowa, are advertising female-oriented construction courses. Individual firms offer mentoring and apprenticeships, but many women say that they still face discrimination in the field.

Women tradespeople often sidestep the problem by starting their own firms in niche markets.

Marta Diaz Aszkenazy founded a firm called Pueblo Contracting Services in San Fernando that specializes in restoring historic buildings, although she does new construction as well.

Her firm has renovated some of Los Angeles’ most beloved landmarks, including the Los Altos Apartments in Mid-Wilshire and the Southwestern School of Law in the old Bullocks Wilshire building.

Same Business Skills Required

Aszkenazy, who holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a general contractor’s license, said owning a construction firm requires the same set of skills that makes any business successful.

“I don’t see it as anything a woman can’t do,” she said. Aszkenazy, who runs the company with her husband, Severyn, practices what she preaches. Her director of operations and senior project manager is a woman. A woman is the project manager in the renovation of the Bryson Apartments, another city landmark.

On any given day, Bryson project manager Dorene Schiavone might oversee 100 or more workers, and she commands the respect of each one, said Aszkenazy’s brother, Frank Diaz, also a project manager.

“She’s tough as nails, and the men work great with her,” Diaz said.

“Women have a talent to make the work go smoother. They can easily bend and be flexible and make a bad situation better, whereas a male ego can often make it worse. The male ego is a lot tougher to deal with.”

Lisa Yetter, a home inspector whose Shadow Hills-based firm is called Estate Construction Services, knows all about the male ego.

“I know there are people out there who say, ‘No, we won’t have a female.’ I have the Realtors suss out the ground ahead of time,” she said.

When she started in the business 20 years ago as a construction project manager, Yetter ran into a male drywall installer who refused to shake her hand because she was the boss.

“Certainly things are more enlightened now than they were,” Yetter said. “And I work in a more enlightened group, the movie industry, gays and lesbians, artistic groups.”

But the oddity of a female home inspector still stops people in their tracks.

Meeting her on a job, Arlene Lloyd, a real estate agent with Prudential California Realty in Glendale, is pleasantly surprised.

“It’s really nice to see a woman doing this kind of work,” Lloyd tells Yetter. She adds that in 20 years selling real estate, she has seen only one other female inspector.

Yetter, who is blond, has long painted nails, and wears makeup as she crawls around filthy basements and water-damaged attics, fell into the business of inspecting houses.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Oregon, Yetter worked for architectural firms in Los Angeles for seven years but says the money was terrible.

Eventually, she used her background as a steppingstone to become a general contractor and hooked up with a contractor who worked with Frank Gehry.

They built houses and condos and did warehouse conversions. But the hours were terrible, and she got tired of chasing after subcontractors at 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. When her boss encountered financial problems, Yetter decided to find a new line of business.

She answered an ad to be a home inspector and realized that she loved the work. “I thought this would be a great way to see how other builders had built houses and get into some significant houses by significant architects.”

Yetter, who draws on her architectural, contracting and construction background in her inspections, is extremely thorough and has been known to spend five hours on a house.

She said she enjoys having new homeowners tag along, asking questions and requiring detailed explanations of such pesky issues as why knob-and-tube electrical wiring needs to be updated and why chimney cracks can be an ominous sign of major damage.

“I realize there’s a need for someone to explain to new buyers how a house works, where things are and how things function and the problems they should anticipate,” she said.

Yetter points out that it’s not that male inspectors don’t take the time to talk to their clients; they often do. But it may be that a woman home buyer--or a wife who’s scheduling the inspection because she’s home more than her husband--feels more comfortable asking another woman a bunch of “stupid questions.”

“Women like the fact that I’m willing to spend time with them,” Yetter said. “They don’t have to feel like an idiot and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re talking about.’ ”

Not surprisingly, Yetter gets a lot of referrals from women, but she impresses men too. Ray Toal, who recently hired her to inspect a house he and his family bought in Glendale, said:

“She’s professional, thorough and was not at all put off by us asking her what about this, what about that.”

Lorrie Webb, a general contractor who runs J.L. Webb & Associates in Hollywood (the initials stand for Janne Lorraine, her full name), said she thinks being a woman in a male-dominated profession is actually a plus. Four years ago, Webb quit her job as regional sales manager for SmithKline Beechum to pursue her first love, building.

“I experienced more chauvinism during my 12 years in corporate America than I have as a contractor,” said Webb, who formerly supervised 100 representatives and 12 managers for the laboratory division of the pharmaceutical giant.

“I’m so neat. I practically vacuum the lawn when I’m done,” she said. “I’m very concerned about privacy and intruding into peoples’ space, and construction is really horrible about that. I think it’s a big advantage for me to be a woman in construction because there are so few of us.”

Webb said some of her male subcontractors have told her they enjoy working for her because she’s organized and responsible. Ed Cusworth, whose company, A-Quality Plastering, often works with Webb, agreed.

“She’s more efficient,” Cusworth said. “She returns calls all the time, which you can’t get some contractors to do in a timely manner. And she knows the business. If there’s something she doesn’t know, she asks you.”

One thing women in the building trades still experience is men who won’t look them in the eye or who address conversation to a male employee instead of them. This goes with the territory, say the women, who find other ways to communicate and get the job done.

“I get that with city inspectors,” Webb said. “I find they look directly at the men. But I don’t care. I just want to get the thing stamped and move on. And I don’t have many of the problems that male contractors have with city inspectors. Maybe it’s an ego thing. I ask questions, even if I know the answer, just to make them feel good.”

Peggy McCloud started out painting houses during her summer between college and graduate school--she has a master’s in psychology--and ended up starting her own painting firm in Silver Lake, Jill of All Trades. She says that her business is “two-thirds women, one-third gay men,” and that she is booked three to four months ahead.

McCloud used to advertise in the Women’s Yellow Pages but relies solely these days on word-of-mouth. She has many repeat clients.

“We make it painless for them,” she said. “We understand they need their house back at night. We coordinate our schedule around when their kids take naps. People think we’re safer. They think we’ll do a nice job, and not paint their furniture and dogs and children.”

‘We’ll Still Get Stares’

Many of McCloud’s employees have been working for her for 10 years. “We’ll still get stares,” she said. “It’s still a novelty but not like it was 10 years ago.”

As for Webb, she grew up loving construction sites and building but not really seeing a career path for herself in that male-dominated field. Ironically, now that she has rediscovered her first love, Webb finds that she uses the same management skills that worked in corporate America--except now she loves the process and results.

So why are there so few women in construction?

“It’s not really presented as an option for a girl to grow up and be a contractor,” Webb mused.

“If women are interested in that, they think they have to be an interior designer. But women are good at project management, which is what a general contractor does. We’re a natural.”

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Denise Hamilton is a Glendale freelance writer.