Women in construction eliminate mansplaining with Matriarchy Build

Lacey Soslow had been renovating South Philadelphia homes with her mom for a decade when she got a call from her friend Gabriella Ainslie.

It was 2021 and Ainslie was in Texas, dealing with pipes that burst after a major winter storm. She needed a plumber but felt intimidated, and she was uneasy about her and her baby being alone with a stranger. Did Soslow know how to find a plumber who was a woman?

She did not. But she knew what it was like when men talked down to her, and the experiences got the pair thinking.

Americans spent more than $650 billion last year on home improvement, maintenance, and repairs, according to an estimate by the home services platform Angi. In recent years, growth in home ownership among single women outpaced that among single men, although the trend reversed last year. Ainslie, 40, and Soslow, 42, saw an appetite for home improvement advice from women to empower women.

In May 2022, they started the online platform Matriarchy Build, which offers one-on-one virtual consultations with tradespeople who are women or nonbinary. They describe their business as “Queer, Latina, and woman-owned.”

Across the country, homeowners and DIYers video chat with professionals who walk them through projects and answer questions about working with professionals. Sometimes, they hire them.

The tradespeople set prices, and the platform takes 20% from each consultation.

Matriarchy Build started with 25 professionals. Now it has about 80 and more than 300 applicants waiting.

“There’s just this hunger for community and to be seen,” Soslow said. “So there’s just this inherent collaboration and positive energy that we’re seeing that’s been super cool.”

Madison Alpern, a customer and local interior designer, knows of an online consulting platform for her industry, but with Matriarchy Build, “I love that it’s all females. Because you wouldn’t normally think of a female plumber or electrician or contractor.”

Customers and professionals often use the word confidence to describe what Matriarchy Build provides.

“Not only is it teaching you, ‘How do I do x, y, or z?’” Alpern, 36, said, “but it’s also giving you the confidence to speak up to your professionals on-site.”

Alpern, founder of Madison Alpern Interiors, bought a house in Whitemarsh Township last September that would be her first gut renovation, and she worried about hiring the wrong contractor.

One company she was considering did great work and came highly recommended, but she wanted to be sure. So she showed the contract to an impartial professional: Gabriela Narvaez, a Washington-based general contractor on Matriarchy Build.

“She and I went paragraph by paragraph” through the contract, Alpern said, and Narvaez pointed out what was and was not reasonable. For example, the contractor should have included more detailed price breakdowns and was asking for too much money up front.

“When I went back to negotiate with the contractor, I was able to take her advice,” Alpern said.

Later, when Alpern had problems, her Matriarchy Build pro “was the first person I contacted, like ‘What do I do?’” she said.

She sent Narvaez photos of the work, which was way behind schedule, and told her how vendors kept saying they hadn’t been paid, which Narvaez said was a big red flag.

“I tend to have a hard time sticking up for myself,” Alpern said, “so I feel like she gave me the confidence to speak up a little more.”

Alpern said she was “gaslit and constantly lied to for months.”

“You have to listen to your gut,” she said. “But I was constantly being told, ‘I have 20 years of experience. I got you.’”

She has a new contractor, and most of her renovations are finished. Through Matriarchy Build, she knows some projects she can do herself, and professionals she can turn to for guidance for her and clients’ homes.

Kelly Ireland of Delaware County has been a plumber since she joined Philadelphia’s union in 2012 at 26.

She loved commercial construction, she said, but “I never got the respect. I was always treated as an apprentice. People would talk past me or even talk to my apprentice, because he was a man.”

She said she got used to it, “but I was angry, because you get sick of it.”

» READ MORE: Philly construction trades are looking to recruit more women

Ireland turned to residential work because “I had people calling me like, ‘I heard you’re a female plumber. I want you in my house.’”

“The feedback I always got was, ‘Wow, you looked me in the eye when you were explaining things,’” she said. “It empowered me to feel good about starting the business.”

Ireland owns TPG Mechanical, which stands for Tiny Plumber Girl, as she’s known on Instagram.

“Because people are sick of the norm and I’m not the norm, it made me successful,” she said. “Being a woman, I’ve never had to advertise. Everything has been word of mouth.”

When Soslow asked her to join Matriarchy Build, she hesitated because of her busy schedule and hatred of Zoom calls. But, she said, “I was feeling desperate for female community.”

“I think for a lot of us, it’s more networking and empowering than making a buck,” she said.

Through the platform, she shares her opinion on other plumbers’ quotes and can walk customers through installing faucets, plumbing toilets, or fixing dishwashers.

“You get to empower a single mother who can’t afford to hire someone to change her kitchen faucet, and she can do it,” she said. “So many people in rural areas reach out to me and say, ‘I just want a woman to talk to.’”

Whitney Bennett started following Philadelphia-based carpenter Mariel Herring on Instagram because her work was beautiful. “Also I didn’t know of any women carpenters,” Bennett said.

So when she began making her dream of opening a general store a reality and saw that Herring offered consultations through Matriarchy Build, she was in. She paid $115 for an hour-long conversation about the East Passyunk space she was turning into her store.

“I’m spending thousands and thousands of dollars getting this shop up and running, but that was probably the most valuable money I’ve spent so far,” said Bennett, 37.

Herring shared advice for projects Bennett could do and recommended a woodworker to build a coffee cart. She gave step-by-step instructions for repairing holes in drywall, recommended materials and tools, and shared where to find them.

“If you Google search, sometimes that stuff can get really, really confusing,” Bennett said. “And some things, you don’t even know what you’re searching for.”

She hired an electrician and plumber, and Herring restored the antique door, but she has done everything else herself.

“The confidence and knowledge I’ve gained, especially the confidence, is just invaluable,” she said.

That’s helped her at home, too. Bennett said she was “terrified” when she bought her first house in 2021 in Point Breeze, but now she’s more sure of herself and what she can do.

Bennett plans to open Civil Stock General Store this month and focus on items made by local artisans, especially women.

“I’m a feminist,” she said, “and I want all women to succeed.”

Herring, who also is a contractor, was “a LEGO kid.” At college, she learned about bicycle maintenance and “became one of the few lady bike mechanics there,” she said. She held women-only hours.

At the bike shop and through her Matriarchy Build work, she’s seen “the relief that a lot of women feel to be able to ask questions they have told themselves are stupid because they don’t know how to do it,” said Herring, 35. “It’s just about creating a safe space to learn.”

On and off the Matriarchy Build platform, she said, “a lot of clients have been women or gay men who don’t necessarily feel comfortable having conversations with your average contractor.” But she called the platform a resource “everybody can benefit from.”

Her first Matriarchy Build client was trying to renovate her bedroom and felt overwhelmed.

“So I just walked her through it step by step,” Herring said. “We left the conversation, and she was feeling pretty confident.”

Herring likes Matriarchy Build’s flexibility, since she has less time for in-person work because she’s personally renovating her West Passyunk home so she can sell it.

“I’m aware of how much learning about building has affected my own sense of autonomy,” she said. “I want to be a nonjudgmental, trustworthy person people can ask questions of.”