Resources

To learn more

about the tradespeople profiled in The Working Hands Project,

visit their websites:

Angela Eastman—Flag Mountain Studio

Nikki Puckett Bosov—Fluid Community Garage

Meredith Hart—Meredith Hart Furniture

Danielle Ackley—The Mud Dauber School

Hope Renovations (pre-apprenticeship program, Chapel Hill, NC)

Chicago Women in Trades (training program in Chicago, IL)

WINTER (pre-apprenticeship program in East LA since 1996)

Oregon Tradeswomen (pre-apprenticeship program since 1989) 

West Virginia Women Work (pre-apprenticeship program, Morgantown WV, since 2000) 

NEW Nontraditional Employment for Women (pre-apprenticeship program NYC since 1978) 

Nevada Women in Trades (online pipelines course in Las Vegas, NV)

Women in Construction (nonprofit in Biloxi, MS)

Tradeswomen INC. (large umbrella org in California since 1979; offers several trades specific pre-apprenticeship courses)

Building Pathways (pre-apprenticeship program in Boston, MA)

Utah Women in Trades (pre-apprenticeship program in West Jordan, Utah 

Vermont works for women  (nonprofit support in Winooski Vermont) 

Heartland Women in the trades (support organization in Kansas City, MO) 

Northeast Center for Tradeswomen’s Equity (Massachusetts-wide support organization) 

Girls Build (nonprofit for young girls in Portland, Oregon)

Tools and Tiaras (non profit for young girls in NYC)

Women + Nonbinary

Pre-Apprenticeship Programs

in the United States

Women + Nonbinary

Trades Classes

Women/Nonbinary Blacksmithing Classes (Angela Eastman, Chapel Hill, NC)

Timber Framing for Women (Heartwood School, Alstead, NH)

Workshops for Women and Female-Identified (Wild Abundance, Asheville, NC)

Women’s + Basic Carpentry (Yestermorrow, Waitsfield, VT)

*more to come.

Academic Resources:

The History of Women in the Trades

Archer, Janice Marie. "Working Women in Thirteenth-Century Paris." PhD diss., The University of Arizona, 1995.

Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.

Bennett, Judith M. Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

———"‘History that Stands Still’: Women’s Work in the European Past." Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 269–283.

Boileau, Étienne. Les Livres des Métiers [The Book of Trades]. Edited by René de Lespinasse and François Bonnardot. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1879.

Clark, Alice. Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century. 1919. Reprint, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.

Crowston, Clare. "Women, Gender, and Guilds in Early Modern Europe: An Overview of Recent Research." International Review of Social History 53 (2008): 19–44.

Dixon, E. "Craftswomen in the Livres des Métiers." The Economic Journal 5, no. 18 (1895): 248–259.

Elisson, Suzanne. "A Craft Linking Thought, Knowledge, and Action." Lost Art Press Blog. April 8, 2016. https://blog.lostartpress.com/2016/04/08/a-craft-linking-thought-knowledge-and-action/.

———"From La Femme de Charpentier to the Lumberjill." Lost Art Press Blog. April 24, 2016. https://blog.lostartpress.com/2016/04/24/from-la-femme-de-charpentier-to-the-lumberjill.

Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2004.

Goldberg, Jeremy. "Women of Artisan Families." In Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret Schaus, 867–870. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Heinz History Center. "Women in Trade and Manufacturing." Blog. Accessed November 2, 2025. https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/blog/discover-meadowcroft-women-in-trade-and-manufacturing/.

Kowaleski, Maryanne, and Judith M. Bennett. "Crafts, Guilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after Marian K. Dale." Signs 14 (1989): 474–487.

Martin, Molly. Hard-Hatted Women: Stories of Struggle and Success in the Trades. Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 1988.

———Wonder Woman Electric to the Rescue: The History of Tradeswomen (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Tradeswoman Press, 2017.

Roff, Shelley E. “‘Appropriate to Her Sex?’ Women’s Participation on the Construction Site in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” In Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, edited by Theresa Earenfight, 109–134. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Thanhauser, Sofi. Worn: A People's History of Clothing. New York: Pantheon Books, 2022.

Tradeswomen Magazine. Tradeswomen Magazine Archive (1981–1998). JSTOR Independent Voices Collection.

Truant, Cynthia. The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Tyrer, Nicola. They Fought in the Fields: The Women's Land Army—The Story of a Forgotten Victory. London: Arrow Books, 2008.

Wiesner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

———Women Working in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

———"Guilds, Male Bonding and Women’s Work in Early Modern Germany." Gender and History 1 (1989): 125–137.

———"Wandervogels and Women: Journeymen’s Concepts of Masculinity in Early Modern Germany." Journal of Social History 24 (1991): 767–782.

Sharing Resources

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