Jim Appleton has worked half a lifetime in a job dominated by burly guys loading heavy stuff into big trucks. But women are changing a rental industry previously dominated by men and Appleton has had to change too.
“There are a lot more women swinging a sledgehammer onto a tent stake,” he said.
Appleton’s Lynn-based family business, Roland L. Appleton Inc., where he holds the title of president, rents tents, chairs and an array of other items for functions and events. After months of social event cancellations slammed his business, Appleton is optimistic about a recovery fueled in part, he said, by ways women have reshaped the rental industry.
When he started working in the family business in 1979, women were relegated to the office, answering telephones and scheduling orders.
“Otherwise, it used to always be guys,” he said.
Today, Appleton’s national counterparts in the rental business nationally include women presidents and chief executive officers. They have expanded the industry into “women in rental” organizations and redefined industry business approaches.
“It’s becoming a lot more women-involved industry,” he said.
Appleton, in words specific to his profession, is describing what Dr. Kara Kaufman calls “intersectionality.”
“It’s a process that declares representation matters,” said the North Shore Community College history and gender and women’s studies professor.
From Kaufman’s academic viewpoint, masculinity has arrived at a reckoning point in American society. A “toxic hegemonic masculinity” characterized by domineering personalities is breaking down.
Kaufman said the best example of this breakdown is former President Donald J. Trump.
“His behavior gave him riches and the highest power of the land. But I would suggest Trump is a very lonely person who is in pain,” she said.
Intersectionality, said Kaufman, is stripping away the prevailing type of masculinity by giving more and more people a voice — not just the women who have risen to the top of Appleton’s industry — but people of color and transgender people.
She is happy to note the young people she teaches have embraced this change.
“I have a lot of hope for the generation that is coming along,” she said.
Rabbi Michael Ragozin has also embraced change — he hasn’t had a choice.
“I was the only male in my workplace until the last two and a half years,” he said.
A Seattle native who formerly taught and worked in high-tech, Ragozin remembers when the ratio of men to women in rabbinical study was two-to-one and the notion of women leading a large congregation in a big city seemed unlikely.
All that has changed, he said.
“In the last couple of years, I am aware of two women in flagship congregations,” he said.
Ragozin has helped lead Swampscott-based Congregation Shirat Hayam’s 475 families since 2015. He said talk about a glass ceiling for women and salary inequities persists in the rabbinical studies and faith work world, but he said change is coming.
“Women who choose to enter the rabbinate are highly regarded and incredibly talented,” he said.
Appleton’s nine-person workforce includes three women and, with almost a half century on the job, the firm’s female office manager calls the shots.
“She basically comes in and tells us what we did wrong,” he said.
