Women's Carpentry -- Workshops!

Hello all,

I just wanted to let the Permie world know that we will be hosting Women's Carpentry workshops in 2020 at Wild Abundance, just 25 minutes outside Asheville, NC!

We feel really excited about these tried and true courses that have been providing carpentry foundations and experience to Women. Folks who identify as femme, AFAB, cis, and trans are all welcome! These are four day workshops, with several sessions being offered in 2020. So, if you can't get to one, worry not, there are more chances.

For those who take the Basic Class, there is also a four-day advanced workshop taking place in July.

Also! We offer a Tiny House & Natural Building Class, for all sex/gender identifications. No pre-requisites needed for this course.

Check out our classes here: https://www.wildabundance.net/classes/womens-basic-carpentry/

Thanks for taking the time to read this, y'all! We hope that these classes make carpentry and building more accessible for more people!

Just curious, why is the course limited to only femme identifying people?

Great site and great initiative, Natalie! I hope you have a very successful course!

I think it's great that you're introducing carpentry skills to those who may not have the same opportunities to pick up those skills as many boys do when they are growing up.

Where I live we have many female trades persons. My friend is a shop teacher and the fanciest table built by his grade six class, was by a girl whose mother is a carpenter.

One of the most unique things I have ever pulled out of a house that I tore down, was a wrought iron spiral staircase with nice oak woodworking attached.  I sold it to the lady who had built it a few years earlier. She had charged $7,500. I sold it to her for 10% of that and she designed a new cabin around it. She probably tells somebody that story every time they visit her cabin. A crane truck picked it up and later set it on the new concrete pad. Then the cabin was built around it. Not something you could just carry in the door.

Mike Harris,

That's a question we have gotten before, a few times, and I definitely understand the curiosity, as people who want to learn carpentry can be male, female, nonbinary, etc. The desire to learn is genderless and sexless.

We totally support all sexes and genders receiving education in the skills they want. but we find that our school is especially well suited to offering this class as a specifically femme/women/AFAB class.

also, we found (from experience!) that many women/femme identifying folks felt less comfortable/more self conscious taking charge in a co-ed environment. To no fault of any gender/sex in the class! But we made a decision to focus on women/femme carpentry classes to create a class that was a blend of women's empowerment and carpentry education.

hopefully that answers your question!

Terrific! I probably won’t make it but I’m glad to see this.

I’m of the generation tried to take woodshop, they wouldn’t let me. Tried to take metal shop, they wouldn’t let me. Tried to learn how to weld, the fellow wouldn’t teach me. Wrong time for the person I was as a young lady.

So very very glad to see that things are not the same! I’ll see if I can’t save my pennies and get there in 2021.

Mike Harris,

That's a question we have gotten before, a few times, and I definitely understand the curiosity, as people who want to learn carpentry can be male, female, nonbinary, etc. The desire to learn is genderless and sexless.

We totally support all sexes and genders receiving education in the skills they want. but we find that our school is especially well suited to offering this class as a specifically femme/women/AFAB class.

also, we found (from experience!) that many women/femme identifying folks felt less comfortable/more self conscious taking charge in a co-ed environment. To no fault of any gender/sex in the class! But we made a decision to focus on women/femme carpentry classes to create a class that was a blend of women's empowerment and carpentry education.

hopefully that answers your question!

Thanks for the response. A just cause with true intentions. Power to you!  

Jennie Little wrote:I’m of the generation tried to take woodshop, they wouldn’t let me. Tried to take metal shop, they wouldn’t let me. Tried to learn how to weld, the fellow wouldn’t teach me. Wrong time for the person I was as a young lady.

So very very glad to see that things are not the same!

They're not that much different for young women today.  My daughter took a welding associates degree this last decade.  The instructor started out not ever addressing her or answering her questions.  Over time, she proved herself to the point that she became his teaching assistant.  In the shop at Link-Belt, where she found employment, she was subjected to a lot of underhanded harassment by callow co-workers.  With persistence and grace, she outlasted those guys and is now in quality control.  Females in traditionally male professions still have to be so much better than the norm in order to survive.

Hi Natalie,
This sounds interesting to me. I looked over the website and have a question regarding the classes. I have done many of my own projects and am familiar and have had a lot of practice using most basic power tools. I've built book shelves, privacy fencing, tables, laid wood floors, and have done all sorts of repair jobs around the home that required power tools, etc. I am familiar with and own table saws, reciprocating saws, miter saws, circular saws, have used jigs, levels, squares, etc., and have made many, many trips to lumbar yards over the years to get needed materials. I think the basic carpentry class would not be something I need, but I would be interested in the Natural Building and Tiny House Workshop. My question is if you take into account someone's life experience to allow them to forego the basic carpentry class?
Thanks.

Annie Collins wrote:Hi Natalie,
This sounds interesting to me. I looked over the website and have a question regarding the classes. I have done many of my own projects and am familiar and have had a lot of practice using most basic power tools. I've built book shelves, privacy fencing, tables, laid wood floors, and have done all sorts of repair jobs around the home that required power tools, etc. I am familiar with and own table saws, reciprocating saws, miter saws, circular saws, have used jigs, levels, squares, etc., and have made many, many trips to lumbar yards over the years to get needed materials. I think the basic carpentry class would not be something I need, but I would be interested in the Natural Building and Tiny House Workshop. My question is if you take into account someone's life experience to allow them to forego the basic carpentry class?
Thanks.

The Tiny House and natural Building class has no prerequisites and you are welcome to register without having taken the basic carpentry class! So, please go ahead and register for that if you feel inspired to.

Just to clarify, though, the Tiny House class is co-ed, not women's only.