United State of Women Summit to Feature Women Can Build: Re-envisioning Rosie Exhibit
Jobs to Move America (JMA), and the AFL-CIO are partnering to sponsor a one-day display of photographs from the Women Can Build: Re-envisioning Rosie exhibit during the White House United State of Women Summit. JMA is a national coalition of community, academic, philanthropic, labor, and environmental groups advocating for high-quality bus and railcar manufacturing jobs. The exhibit will be on display at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center this Tuesday, June 14, 2016.
The collection features eleven photos, taken by Pulitzer-prize winning photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice, which showcase modern women across the nation who build trains and buses as well as six World War II era photos from the Library of Congress. The term “Rosie” in the exhibit’s title derives from “Rosie the Riveter,” a cultural symbol in the United States that represents women who worked manufacturing jobs in World War II, replacing men who enlisted.
Chancy Davis, one of the subjects of the photos in the Women Can Build exhibit, is the only woman welder at the New Flyer Industries bus factory in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
“For me personally, I can’t sit behind a desk,” says Davis. “This, along with my good attention to detail, made welding a right fit for me. There are people out there who are old-fashioned and set in their ways and think this isn’t a women’s field. I want to show them that people can do whatever they set their mind to by being a living example of this.”
The JMA coalition first created this project in 2015 with funding from several groups, including the Ford and Surdna Foundations, IUE-CWA and SAG-AFTRA. The project highlights the need for the multi-national companies that manufacture buses and trains to increase opportunities for women, especially women of color, while providing these courageous women with a voice on the job to ensure they have the family-supporting careers in this industry.
“This project seeks to bring awareness to those women who work hard every day to ensure we are building U.S. buses and trains for future generations,” said JMA National Policy Director Linda Nguyen-Perez.
