Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, Judaline Cassidy thought she’d become a lawyer. But when her guardian died leaving her no money for law school tuition, she figured trade school was the next best thing.
“I chose plumbing over electrical because I believed that the worst that could happen in plumbing was that I would get wet,” she said in an interview with Equal Rights Advocates.
To her surprise, Cassidy fell in love with plumbing right away. “Working with my hands gave me a sense of pride and ‘you go girl’ fortitude,” she explained.
But making it as a female plumber wasn’t always so easy. She remembers driving up to her first job and the male plumbers laughing at her petite stature. “That was the moment I knew that I would have to prove them wrong,” she recalls. “At first it was difficult, always having to prove that I’m capable and that I love plumbing as much as any of the guys.”
Tradeswomen are underrepresented in fields like construction, plumbing and pipelaying. According to the Department of Labor, women make up just four percent of skilled trade workforce. Furthermore, women struggle to earn as much as their male counterparts in these fields.
With more than 20 years in the industry under her belt, Cassidy is on a mission to change this. She wants tradeswomen to get the same opportunities as tradesmen. In a lecture at the Makers Conference in 2017, she made sure the issue took center stage.“There’s only one difference between a male plumber and a female plumber: opportunity. Women can spend their whole lives learning a craft, but if no one will hire her, what good is it?” she said.
She thinks everyone, even those who don’t work in skilled trades, can play a role in closing the opportunity gap by increasing the representation of tradeswomen in the media. “Why not put some awesome tradeswomen in your shows in commercials instead of the dudes?” she asks.
Cassidy’s next big project will tackle equality head on: she’s helping to transform a former women’s prison in New York City into the Women’s Building, a hub for activists working at the forefront of rights for girls’ and women.
