Trade Secrets

A film by Stephanie Antalocy

1985 | 23 minutes | Color | DVD | Order No. 99054

SYNOPSIS

Perfect as a training film or as an historical look at labor issues in the 1980s, TRADE SECRETS has been purchased by hundreds of colleges, libraries, community and women's groups. “An ironworker, a sprinkler fitter, and an electrician; all women who describe their jobs and the physical and personal obstacles they overcame to get where they are. In the 1970’s, because of jobs with new equal employment laws, women began to enter the construction trades challenging the traditional male world. Regarded with hostility and suspicion, not all women completed their apprenticeships to be fully qualified as journey women. One who did, an ironworker, describes how tired she was each day as work ended because of her refusal to give up. An Asian woman who had been a secretary for ten years, speaks of suing for harassment when she lost a job after refusing to go out with her foreman. A female welder tells of getting burns until she developed skills and the eventual love of her job. Marrying a fellow welder from the shipyards, she relies on him to help out at home in raising their family. A sprinkler fitter describes the problems she had with men on the job until they saw that she could carry her own share of the work. A woman who teaches skills to women entering the trades explains that she teaches self-esteem and confidence building to women more than the skills themselves. The greater financial power of women in the trades, and their new sense of identity as journey women are discussed in this film about some of the changes taking place in the workplace today.” -Landers Film Review

PRESS

"The best video on women in the trades to come out of the recent movement."

Bobbi Keirstad President, Tradeswomen, Inc.

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Stephanie Antalocy

After studying film and video at NYU and Global Village, Stephanie Antalocy produced the film TRADE SECRETS: BLUE COLLAR WOMEN SPEAK OUT. As a professor of English and Women’s Studies at California State University, Sacramento, she completed the documentary short WORDS TO LIVE BY, about creativity, hope, and success at a state university, in 1997. Antalocy has also written scripts for the Center for Urban Education and Sustainable Agriculture in San Francisco, and filmed an experimental piece on the American River and casual environmental destruction. (01/20)

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