Women still struggling to make gains in construction
Nina Yefimov doesn’t consider herself a pioneer. But she does know that working in a traditionally male-dominated field hasn’t been easy.
Yefimov, the owner of Absolute Builders, a custom builder based in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Ill., has worked as a real estate developer since 1995. She’s built a strong business by tackling renovations and new construction in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, and is still succeeding despite the tough residential market.
But Yefimov admits that being a woman in a field populated mostly by men – including the contractors and subcontractors with whom she has to work – has at times proved challenging.
“It’s very difficult for women to be in construction,” Yefimov said. “You have to prove yourself every day. You have to make sure the subcontractors will listen to you, will do what you tell them to do. A lot of times, they try not to. You have to be tough. If they won’t listen to me, I’ll fire them. That’s the best way, the only way. You fire them to show that you are just as tough as anyone else.”
Yefimov, of course, is not the only female residential developer. But she is part of a small group. According to the National Association of Women in Construction, women make up about 9 percent of the total construction industry in the United States. That number, though small, has been going up.
What will it take for that number to increase? For one thing, women in the construction fields shouldn’t have to worry about working twice as hard as any man in the field to prove how tough she is. She shouldn’t have to worry about subcontractors ignoring her because she is a woman.
Unfortunately, many women in the construction industry still run into men with extremely outdated ideas concerning whether females are “fit” to work on job sites or run their own development companies.
Fortunately, developers such as Yefimov, who is now in the midst of promoting her latest renovation, The Grand Briar condominiums in Chicago’s hot Lakeview neighborhood, are proving the old stereotypes wrong. And associations such as the National Association of Women in Construction are showing that the number of female construction pros is increasing every year.
The good news is that talented developers like Yefimov will one day be able to walk on a job site without anyone doing a double take because of her gender.
“Even from the time when I was very young, I wanted to be in construction,” Yefimov said. “I always wanted to do something with construction. That ability to create something nice, something beautiful is an amazing thing.”
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