Paige Lutes Brigham knew she had ripped the seat of her pants. But the day had just begun. So she blushed a little and went on with the work.
“I finished the day,” she said. “I wasn’t going to be a girl about it.”
That was earlier in the engineer’s career, as she and a city official climbed fences to verify water meters in Claremont. She could have gone home, but she didn’t want to give anyone the idea this woman couldn’t man up and do the job.
The National Engineers Week Foundation estimates that 90 percent of the field’s workers are male.
That puts Paige Lutes Brigham of Hickory in a distinct minority. An engineer, project manager, consultant and problem solver, she works for Atriax Group in Hickory.
There, she is the only female engineer in the office. The same has been true in all of the offices where Brigham has found employment, and in the five years she ran her own consulting business, the vast majority of her clients were men.
When she finished the architectural technology program at Catawba Valley Community College, there was one other female graduate.
Brigham juggles responsibilities as varied as offering reports on the conditions of buildings and helping builders deal with structural failure to raising her 8-year-old son.
She loves her job. Her son is less thrilled with the arrangement.
“He wants me to go to work at a convenience store or something – that’s what he said,” she said.
Brigham’s schedule doesn’t leave her a great deal of family time. She got back from Guam on Thursday. Of the last 13 weeks, she’s been on the road – or in the air – during about seven of them.
In the beginning of her career, there were so few women on the job that Brigham felt she had to work harder and think faster to prove herself.
Occasionally, she was right.
The first engineer she worked for carried his wealth of knowledge in his head. The staff didn’t use computers. They did math in their head and hand-drew building plans.
One day, the boss asked a question and Brigham came back with a rapid-response answer.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Well how in the world did you come up with that,’” she said. “Like they don’t teach girls math in school.”
Brigham said she’s found a perfect office environment now, but workplace dynamics haven’t always been easy.
Being the only woman used to be tough because she couldn’t be one of the guys. And she wasn’t one of the girls in the front office, either.
“Sometimes it was lonely,” she said.
Today, Brigham thinks she’s learned to deal with being a minority in her field. She slides on her work boots to visit construction sites, but makes sure she has her pink coffee mug, too.
“I’m definitely a girly girl,” she said.
She also carries an extra pair of pants.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement