‘Move Over Bob’: Construction zine makes space for women

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Building has a popularity for being a boys membership. That notion exists for a cause.

About one in ten workers in construction were women in 2024, in response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That share is even smaller within the trades.

In Arizona, Kate Glantz is looking for to get extra ladies into the development workforce via an uncommon technique: a shiny journal. The co-founder of the media and life-style model Transfer Over Bob has sought to coach extra ladies about their alternatives to pursue a profession within the trades.

Right here, Glantz talks with Building Dive in regards to the mission behind the journal, its objectives for recruiting and schooling and the response to its cheeky identify.

CONSTRUCTION DIVE: How did this journal come about? What’s the concept behind it?

KATE GLANTZ: A print journal in 2025 was clearly not the very very first thing we considered, however I will say this repeatedly: Ladies aren’t Googling learn how to be a development employee. So we needed to discover methods to satisfy them the place they’re. And on the identical time, we face an enormous expert labor scarcity within the U.S. and I simply do not imagine it is a difficulty of curiosity. I actually imagine that is an consciousness situation and it is a narrative situation and it is a advertising and marketing problem. So we knew we wanted to get these tales to ladies the place they could not simply click on away.

We realized faculties are the place our prospects are. I now have partnerships with about 350 faculties — of which 80% are excessive faculties and 20% center faculties — throughout Arizona, so the journal just isn’t solely going into children’ backpacks and residential to their households, however lecturers are utilizing it at school and steerage counselors are utilizing it of their classes. It’s not curriculum, it’s a shiny journal. This primary situation simply got here out in August. There are 20,000 copies, 18,000 of which have been distributed to varsities, ladies’s prisons, nonprofits and a few public libraries. 

However what’s actually thrilling, is that we’re a teen journal in lecture rooms, proper? And so we employed a profession and technical schooling instructor to develop each a center college classroom information after which a highschool classroom information, one for CTE college students, one for non-CTE, after which now we have an English and Spanish household information.

Is it solely in Arizona for now?

The partnerships are in Arizona. We now have subscribers everywhere in the nation. However actually the storytelling is concentrated on Arizona. And the rationale that we’re beginning there — we completely plan to be nationwide — is that development is kind of native. Certifications and subsequent steps and scholarships and coaching alternatives, they range a lot by area. And so earlier than we went actually large with this aspirational, narrative-changing endeavor, we needed to ensure the backend was as shored up as attainable. 

It’s not simply cool footage and tales and sound bites. Each web page of the journal has a QR code the place you may truly then scan it and get into the place the apprenticeship is. You may see, what are the alternatives in my space for plumbing, for instance. 

What’s the connection been like with companions, contractors and apprenticeship applications?

Extremely supportive. They adore it. Everybody is aware of that now we have a workforce scarcity. And tradeswomen solely make up a small share of the workforce, although it varies by area. However we all know various views make higher companies. 

I feel that regardless of the place you fall personally, politically, there’s this form of distinctive expressway for what we’re doing, which is bringing extra expertise into the labor market. Every thing that I talk via the journal and every little thing we discuss in any of our supplies, frankly, is as relevant to males. It is simply the messengers are the ladies, and that is simply by no means been seen earlier than.

Let’s discuss in regards to the identify. Have you ever acquired any pushback for the title “Transfer Over Bob?”

I imply, in development, you’ve obtained to have an edge. You’ve obtained to have a humorousness. And if you do not have thick pores and skin, you are going to be in bother. So the selection between a extra edgy and provocative identify that you just’re not going to overlook and can perk your ears up, I really feel like that is much more highly effective. 

That is an anthem. It is a motion. It is one thing that requires energy to say. “Transfer over Bob.” 

However we are going to at all times say, this isn’t in any respect about pushing males out. After I ask ladies, “How’d you get into development?” the primary reply, far and away is: “My dad.” Not one a part of our ethos is anti-man. It is the truth that every little thing is being constructed predominantly by one perspective. We pose no menace to males by bringing extra ladies into development.