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The Women's Construction Collective: Building For The Future, Ruth Mcleod

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This edition of SEEDS focuses on a project developed to integrate low-income women into Jamaica's construction industry. In two years, 34 women passed through the project's basic training and skills upgrading courses. More than 90 percent of these women became employed, the majority as masons and carpenters. The story of how this field was identified as a potential source of income for women, and how the project developed and evolved in response to changing circumstances, presents many useful lessons. These should be of particular interest to those seeking to identify employment areas where women's participation is feasible and in helping …