Author Topic: Coveralls for all: What Halliburton learned from Rosie the Riveter  (Read 875 times)

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Houston Chronicle by Jose R. Gonzalez 10/3/2018



Maysarah Mikail, a field engineer for the Houston oilfield services company Halliburton, spent the summer in the Permian Basin, working 12-hour days in temperatures of up to 120 degrees. But it wasn’t just the searing West Texas heat that made her uncomfortable in her heavy, flame-retardant coveralls.

The coveralls, designed for men, just didn’t fit right, no matter how Mikail tried to adjust, whether rolling the sleeves up to elbow or washing the coveralls repeatedly in the hope they would shrink. As she went about her job supervising a team of three engineers, she worried about loose clothing getting caught in machinery, such as oil pumps, or on handrails as she climbed ladders.

“There’s a lot of safety concerns that may be out there,” Mikail said. “ I need to eliminate as many distractions as possible so I can stay focused on the job.”

Mikail doesn’t have to worry about clothing distractions anymore as Halliburton has introduced coveralls designed and made specifically for women. Working with a West Texas manufacturer and the apparel design department of Texas Tech University, Halliburton has tackled a problem that has bedeviled women since the days of Rosie the Riveter, when women flocked to factories during World War II and had to make do with ill-fitting coveralls made for men.

Some 75 years later, women’s workwear is still largely men’s clothing shrunk to women’s sizes, ignoring the differences in the bodies of the two sexes, said Tyneal Buckner, chief customer officer of Halliburton’s manufacturing partner, RPS Solutions of Wolforth. As Halliburton and other companies begin to refashion coveralls for the women in their workforce, it’s part of an increasing recognition that energy companies need to do more to recruit and retain women in an industry that remains dominated by men.

In the United States, women account for only about 13 percent of workers in oil exploration and production, down from about 17.5 percent a decade ago, and 14 percent in energy services, up slightly from 13 percent in 2008, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Internationally, women account for as little as 10 percent of the technical positions and jobs in the field that typically lead to roles as top executives, according to a 2017 study by the Boston Consulting Group, a management consulting firm, and World Petroleum Council, an industry group based in London.

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Coveralls-for-all-What-Halliburton-learned-from-13276249.php?