Construction glass ceiling being broken day-by-day with more women landing on-site construction jobs

More and more women are working on local construction sites. Photo credit Jim Fink - WBEN By Jim Fink, WBEN.com Newsroom Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Take a good look at the on-site workforce at any construction project. It is no longer a male-only workforce. More and more women can be spotted donning hard hats, steel-toed boots and brightly colored construction vests. "The glass ceiling has been broken," said Gina Terbot, a supervisor with ARC Building Partners in Buffalo. Shattered more so than broken. It wasn't all that long ago that an on-site female construction worker was considered something of an outlier. Not any more. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 12,000 people employed in the Buffalo Niagara region's construction industry, some 15% - or, roughly 2,000, are females. "It's to the point where women aren't treated any different on the (construction) sites," said AutoDesk's Mindy Hoffman. That is the backdrop and the theme for a weeklong celebration of women in construction being put together by the Buffalo Niagara chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction. "I can't tell you just how encouraging it is to see women working in construction from top-to-bottom positions and jobs," said Lawrence Dupre, Erie County Legislature. "A long time in coming." But, work is far from done, Terbot said. The local NAWIC chapter is busy recruiting the next generation of female workers by tapping into such places as McKinley High School and Erie I ...