TDC’s industrial park is home to numerous manufacturing businesses that keep Clinton County – and the world – moving. Within those buildings are thousands of employees using their skills and expertise to create, fix, and assemble just about anything you might think of.

In honor of Women’s History Month, the TDC team led by our intern, Gianna Cantone, launched a campaign soliciting nominations for women who exemplify excellence in modern manufacturing. In the coming months, we will highlight several of these outstanding women in our community, all of whom have gone above and beyond, through a series of articles on our website.

While women had begun to enter the workforce in the 1920s during the Industrial Revolution, they wouldn’t be formally recognized for their contributions until 1981, when the first Women’s History Week was established. Just six years later, it grew into an entire month of dedication honoring their daily efforts. During times of war, men left their jobs and went overseas, and women assumed their positions in the workforce – without any acknowledgement of their efforts and abilities. It was only after World War II that women began a slow push to maintain their jobs, until the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and ‘70s accelerated change. By 1999, women comprised 60% of the workforce – an all-time peak.

Prior to COVID-19, women constituted half of the working population, yet only one-third of those employed in manufacturing were women. The same could be said for all historically “male-dominated” fields - there was room to grow in the agricultural, construction, and transportation sectors. Post-pandemic, women’s labor force participation sharply declined. A lack of social supports, including but not limited to inaccessible childcare, led many women to withdraw from the workforce. While women have slowly begun to reenter the workforce at large, women in manufacturing still only comprise 30% of the sector’s labor.

The trek for women to get where they are today and stagnation of women’s participation as part of the manufacturing workforce further distinguishes our local Women in Manufacturing. Keep an eye out for these stories in coming months!