As we work to build our new Ellen DeGeneres Campus, we are measuring the project’s impact through our “5 Es”: education, emotion, environment, economy and equity. For the last of those “Es,” equity, our goal is to promote gender equity by hiring a 35% female construction workforce with 35% female leadership. 

Currently around 100 of the construction workers on our Campus are women. While Rwanda is known for its gender equity—in fact, they recently broke their own record for number of women in government—women are still underrepresented in the construction field. But as Martine Dushime, a member of the project’s leadership team and quantity surveyor on the project, explains in this video [LINK], we aim to help change that with our Ellen Campus, which has female supervisors, female bricklayers and even female heavy equipment operators. 

 In addition to sharing their day-to-day responsibilities, the women on the project have come together to form a women’s group, a female-only space where women can support one other through on-the-job training, financial decision making and other professional and personal support. The women in this group are “paving the way” for their daughters and sisters, says Martine. “You’re going to be able to say after this project that ‘I know someone who is a woman who does construction.’”

Please take a look at our new video to learn more about the women who are supporting one another on our Ellen Campus site as they break barriers in construction while working to build a better future for themselves, their families and their communities.