Eventually, Peggy became a plumber herself. And when Peggy Sue got married, guess what? She married a plumber, one of the more common male variety. When Holly was trying to think of musical name that would embody the wholesomeness of the all-American girl, he decided Peggy Sue was it! A few years after inspiring Holly, Peggy Sue moved to California where she settled down, met a man, fell in love and got married. That’s right Peggy Sue was a plumber! In the 1950s the real Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue Gerron, was dating Buddy Holly’s drummer. If you have ever heard Buddy Holly’s song Peggy Sue, guess what? You’ve heard of the most famous woman plumber ever. As a matter of fact, the most famous woman plumber that no one has ever heard of was also the embodiment of the 1950s girl-next-door. Now Josephine the Plumber may have been famous in her own right, but I’m about to tell you about the most famous women plumber that no one has ever heard of. To say the least, I was grateful for Josephine. Josephine the plumber, in a small way, had blazed the trail and made it a little easier for me to be accepted as a woman plumber. I wasn’t the first unicorn they had seen. It had created the possibility of a woman plumber. At the time, I had not seen the commercials, but her presence on television had created a point of reference for the men I worked with.
#Josephine the plumber professional#
Endorsing the product not as a housewife, but as a professional plumber! She was the first manifestation in the media of a professional woman plumber, even if she was fictional. In the television commercials Josephine the plumber would endorse Comet sink cleanser.
A reference to a character in a long running television ad campaign from the 1960s and 70s. I remember when I first began my career as a plumber, older plumbers, upon realizing I was a woman, would say, “Oh, look she’s like Josephine the Plumber”. To start this cycle women have to see women working in these professions. And, the more society accepts women in the trades, the more women will enter the trades. The more women enter the trades, the more society will accept women in the trades. Women have to see it, in order to know they can be it! We must break the mold and create a new way for society to think about women in the trades. We need to create a new paradigm where women plumbers are as ubiquitous as women teachers, nurses, doctors or lawyers. We need to make sure women know about the benefits of being a plumber and the pride that comes with being a part of this critical sector of the workforce that helps keep our country strong, safe and healthy. We need to let women see themselves as plumbers, so they know it is possible and as acceptable a profession for women as a doctor. We need to find ways of mainstreaming the idea of women plumbers through television, movies and other media. We need to interact with and engage young people and sow the idea of women plumbers in their minds as early as possible, so the concept is fully grown and second nature to them by the time they are adults. But what steps can we take, both individually and collectively to encourage more women to enter the plumbing trade? Changing society won’t be easy, but we can start by changing the way the world sees women plumbers. Despite continued outreach, I still hear trade industry professionals say, “What can I do? Women just don’t want to do this type of work!” I’m sure, not too long ago, when women were type cast as nurses you would hear people in the medical industry say, “Women don’t want to be doctors, they’d rather be nurses.” It is this bias where the problem lies. The construction trades have developed a sense of learned helplessness when it comes to the recruitment of women. Years of social bias and the push to make everyone attend a four-year college, especially women, have resulted in perpetually low numbers of women plumbers. These days we have come to readily accept women doctors but the same does not hold true for women plumbers. Replace doctor with plumber and you will find the same bias that exists for women in the medical profession is ten-fold in the plumbing industry. Some of you may be familiar with this riddle, but for those of you who are not and found yourselves struggling to solve the mystery, rest assured, you are not alone. The answer is: The little boy’s mother is the doctor. In the operating room, a doctor came in and looked at the little boy and said I can’t operate on him he is my son! The ambulance brought the son to the hospital. The Riddle: A father and son were in a car accident where the father was killed.
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