Female Solar Workers Can Face Prejudice

Most solar installers and service technicians are men. So women in the industry often know what it’s like to be the only woman at a job site and to be treated differently because of their gender.

The climate is changing, and our journalists are here to help you make sense of it. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter and never miss a story. “When they do physical labor, there’s always someone trying to help them to lift the panels,” says Loraima Jaramillo of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. “They can do that. They don’t need help. They are just like any other worker.”

She says creating a more diverse and equitable solar workforce starts with hiring. She recommends actively recruiting and promoting more women and people from other under-represented groups. For example, her organization helped recruit a woman and a transgender man to work on a solar installation at a large public market in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

But it takes more than contracts to advance equity. Jaramillo says it’s also critical to build a workplace culture that enables all employees to thrive — for example, by leading diversity and equity trainings.

“Not just the leadership of the organization, but the rest of the team needs to understand that this is a place for everyone, and everyone has the same value and can do the job,” she says.

Sages help with that, too, and the satisfaction of working as a team is its own reward.

Sages Low-cost Classes: Free and low-cost classes and free clubs for seniors of all ages often meet in the beautiful Sages Room at the TCC, at the Topanga Library, and in private homes. The schedule can be found at canyonsages.com

If you would like to offer a class or volunteer to assist, contact class coordinator, Velvet Marshall at velvetmarshall@gmail.com.

Monthly Senior Dinner.

Topanga sometimes refers to itself as the Last of the Wild West with a deep history and a cast of characters still living to tell their stories, also chronicled in “The Topanga Story” (topangahistoricalsociety.org) and decades of local newspapers.

Meet them and hear their stories at the Canyon Sages’ free monthly dinners. This is its main social event usually held the first Friday of the month from October-June at the Community House. Here you can catch up with your neighbors and meet new friends over a delicious, free dinner. Joe Grasso is Chef for the monthly dinners and longtime volunteer Lisa Villasenor prepares the year-end Holiday Dinner in December. All food is prepared and served by volunteers. RSVP is required.

For more about the dinners or to volunteer: Karen Dannenbaum at Karen.dannenbaum@gmail.com.

Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy/ChavoBart Digital Media forYale Climate Connections for Environmental Communication, February 10, 2023,yaleclimateconnections.org

Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories

International Women’s Day (IWD) arrives on March 8 and is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. IWD has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people. Today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. IWD is not country, group or organization specific.

The concept of his year’s campaign theme: #EmbraceEquity isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. A focus on gender equity needs to be part of every society’s DNA and it’s critical to understand the difference between equity and equality. So, what’s the difference between “equity” and “equality?” They derive from the same Latin root, aequus , meaning “even” or “fair” or “equal,” and are often used interchangeably. Yet, despite these similarities, equity and equality are inherently different concepts. The IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme seeks to get the world talking about why “equal opportunities are no longer enough” and can, in fact, be exclusionary rather than inclusive.