Thick Skin is a collection of funny, gritty, honest, and inspiring stories from women, transgender, non-binary, and gender expansive people working in the skilled trades.
Ever wonder what it’s like to be an electrician, a longshore worker, or a welder? Find out what it takes to make it in a traditionally male-dominated field. We’re also untangling the issue of the essential and skilled labor shortage in the construction and manufacturing trades and how this group of revolutionaries is poised to save the American economy in this time of economic crisis.
In this IWD segment you’ll meet three revolutionaries: Molly, Lynn and Jazzy. We’ll travel from the women’s trade workers’ movement of the 1970’s to what it’s like to be a 20 something working today in Oakland, CA as a welding artist.
Part 1: An inside scoop from two pioneering trade workers who paved the way in the 70s and 80s for women working in the trades. Molly and Lynn talk frankly about enduring culturally accepted sexism, their exclusion from equal opportunities in the unions, and how they fought back and WON! (And are keeping the fight alive…). You won’t want to miss this time traveling episode! And you won’t believe how far the movement has come and the work they did to make it happen.
Part 2: Jazzy started welding as a teenager at 13, and now works as a fabricator, an artist, an educator, and a fierce advocate for BIPOC, women, femme identifying, Queer and Trans people in the trades and industrial arts. Jazzy is unphased by anyone who doubts her skills and even uses that to urge her onward to reach her big, welding dreams. She’s igniting her own pathway and is always extra prepared to blow everyone’s expectations way out of the cooling tank! She’s killin it, with her “guns blazin,” as she says!