The plumbing industry is experiencing a labor shortage. So why not hire women?
The Department of Labor's Women's Bureau defines "nontraditional occupations" for women as those which women comprise 25 percent or less of the total employed. In 2001, of the 6.3 million people classified as working in the construction trades, only 153,000 of them were women; that works out to only 2.4 percent, according to the Women's Bureau.