People’s World: Women in building trades face harassment, discrimination

September 18. 2026

Equal Rights Advocates Board member and former client Hanna Hurst was interviewed for a People’s World article about the experience of being a woman in construction trades.

“I was capable of running the bigger drills, and becoming a Level 4 miner,” one level below the top of scale, Hurst said. She applied as spots became open—and was turned down. “I asked ‘Why?’ and the answer was ‘We don’t want her. She’s a girl.’”

…[T]he EEOC investigated Hurst’s case and then tried to mediate the dispute and convince the mine owners to settle her complaint by making her whole and by changing working conditions at the mine. When the owners refused, EEOC formally released Hurst and Equal Rights Advocates to sue for damages, and joined them. They won. …

“Attempts to weaken the EEOC are discouraging and unfortunate, to the extent that if women do not feel they have backing to call out wrongdoing in these male-dominated industries, sometimes it is easier to pick another career path,” Hurst said.

Which, as Hurst pointed out in a follow-up extensive e-mail, is unlikely to happen under the current Republican Trump administration. And that bodes ill for women in the building trades facing sexual harassment and discrimination on the job, she added. …

“Congress wanted equal opportunities for all when this law was passed,” [Hurst said.] “The system they came up with to hold companies accountable for having systems in place that are fair for everyone is the EEOC. What good is a law if there is a weakened or no system for enforcing the law? The law then becomes useless.”

Read the full article.