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Wildcat Women: North Slope tales: 14 women breaking ground in Alaska
Kay Cashman Petroleum News
Social changes in the United States, combined with the harsh northern Alaska environment where the safety of each worker depends on his or her co-workers, often makes gender issues inconsequential on the North Slope.
That’s not to say the women who made their way north to earn big bucks on the “Last Frontier” starting in the 1960s, especially during construction of the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline, weren’t challenged by incidents of gender discrimination, but in Carla Williams’ book, “Wildcat Women, Narratives of Women Breaking Ground in Alaska’s Oil and Gas Industry,” those challenges were minor compared to the demanding work, terrain and weather of the North Slope.
The book is divided into three sections - the first and the third primarily devoted to the social issues of the time period, which gives readers a sense of what was happening in the United States when the individual stories in the middle section took place.
In setting the scene for the tales of 14 women, Williams touches on the 1950s and ’60s civil rights movement, the women’s rights push in the 1960s and ’70s, and the North Slope oil rush in the 1960s and ’70s.
The book has a few historical inaccuracies or omissions, such as skipping from Katalla to Prudhoe Bay oil production and missing the significance of the 1957 Swanson River oil discovery in Southcentral Alaska that led to statehood in 1959 and subsequent oil and gas production from the area.
But the stories of the 14 women, who were interviewed over a period of 18 years, and some of Williams own experiences in Alaska’s oil patch, are all interesting, sometimes funny, amazing and a little heart wrenching.
The first arrivals on the North Slope tended to land up in office jobs, although some made it into management positions; those who came a little later were able to get work as truck drivers, pipefitters, roughnecks and security guards, paving the way for future generations of women - Williams describes them as pioneers and trailblazers.
Bumping heads with Jesse Carr The first story is about Irene Bartee, who had grown up in a logging family and worked in a police department before moving to Alaska in the 1960s. By the time pipeline construction was beginning she had experience bidding jobs, expediting freight and was a small plane pilot.
Bartee frequently clashed with legendary Teamster boss Jesse Carr. One skirmish was over a nonunion equipment company and the drivers she used to haul their equipment to the North Slope.
“We were going to take equipment up the highway and rent it up the ice road. We got threats against the equipment - a lot of them,” Bartee was quoted as saying in Williams’ book. “Jesse was very strong in that day and age. I went over to Jesse’s office. … I told him that I was going to send the equipment up the road and wasn’t looking for union drivers to take it up, and he told me what was going to happen to the equipment. I said, ‘Jesse, you’ve got one of the prettiest new buildings in town, it’s a beautiful thing.’ I said that he had better remember who I am. I came from the wrong side of the tracks back in North Carolina and the mountains. Our company had … enough explosives … to blow this building sky high. … I said to remember that. … ‘If anything happens to my equipment you’d better watch this building.’ … The next morning there were six security guards on the building. Our equipment went up the road and didn’t have any problems. Everybody else’s equipment went up the road, and there were nails on the road. … They had a heck of a bad time.”
Executive Order 11246 Kate Cotten wasn’t hunting for a North Slope job when she was picked up hitchhiking by a man who hired Slope workers. He, like many other employers at the time, had a minority hire quota to meet due to Executive Order 11246 (1965) that required federal contractors and subcontractors with 51 or more employees and contracts of $50,000 or more to provide the government with affirmative action plan goals and monitoring.
As a result, some unions and “companies clambered to hire minorities and women to fulfill minority-hire goals,” Williams wrote.
“Women were encouraged to break gender barriers and work in male-dominated fields and, with union agreements, receive equal pay. … Breaking into trade typically reserved for men occurred within family businesses and during war times … but without these catalysts, women experienced little success,” Williams wrote.
Cotten landed up with a job on the Slope and living in a construction camp, where the roommate she’d been assigned was moonlighting as a prostitute. “I spent many nights sleeping on the bathroom floor,” Cotten told Williams.
She started in an office and eventually moved on to various jobs previously held only by men, such as a Delta equipment driver, which required driving on ice roads and wrestling with pipe.
A past that is fading When asked what triggered her interest in writing Wildcat Women, Williams told Petroleum News in an interview, “I started talking to women who had recently retired … and I thought their stories were very interesting, so I decided that time was running out and nobody was writing their stories down … I never thought it would take 20 years to actually publish a book!
“I hate to say it, but along with the death of two women, one woman cannot remember much anymore. … It’s a past that is fading.”
What do the 14 women have in common?
“Very few of them thought they were doing anything spectacular or different; none of them felt they were pioneers in any way. They were all surprised I even wanted to talk to them about their years in Alaska,” Williams said.
“The other thing … we weren’t celebrated as a girl or a woman growing up, kind of second-class citizens, if we … did anything all on our own, tenacity and the ability to stick with something” was key, she said. “They did not back off from challenges - they all had that.
“I don’t think they had a perspective of what they were doing at the time. They were there for a job. They wanted to do the best they could. They wanted to keep their jobs. Since they had the ability to stick with a project, it all came together. Many women - and men - who could do that … rose up the ladder,” she said.
After 40 years in Alaska, Williams retired to Sedona, Arizona, as a part-time hiking guide.
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