Despite some men’s jeers, she found strong support in the unions. “We did very well because I probably had the best crew of iron workers in all of New York State, and my thanks forever goes to Local 40 and Local 361,” she says, adding that the crew showed “no discrimination.” One man told her, “You bring us the contracts. We’ll give you the best people we have.”

In 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter made gaining those contracts a little easier for women facing discrimination, by signing an executive order mandating state and federal programs and goals aiding women-owned businesses. New York State, in turn, set a goal for female contractors that Janis describes as “zero percent.”

As a result, she was hired to help build a railroad that used state money, but only given 100 ft to construct.

“I asked what about the other 1,000 feet,” she recalls, and the contractor told her bluntly that she was only needed because he wanted “to be able to say that I hired a woman contractor.”

“So we went to Gov. [Mario] Cuomo and said that you have to set a goal. Not only that, it has to be something worthwhile,” she says.

Cuomo set a goal of five percent participation for female contractors, the same level that exists today. At the time, she says, the number was satisfactory. But she laments that it hasn’t increased since then. “We’re going to have to start bothering people again,” she says.

Janis describes the early years of Professional Women in Construction, which she started in 1980, as a “bunch of women” who “commiserated, cried upon each other’s shoulders, and had people come talk to us.”

But eventually, she realized that her group couldn’t accomplish anything if the industry’s most influential voices – most of them men – weren’t involved.

“If we couldn’t interact one-and-one with the men that were still the decision-makers … we were just like a little girls club,” she says.

So she called for a vote to extend membership to men, which passed in 1985.

Although, she says, men were not initially “banging the door down to get in,” more flocked to the organization to fulfill Cuomo’s goals to award contracts to women-run businesses. “They came to PWC in essence to see the whites of our eyes,” she says, which created a “great interaction.”

“But keep in mind,” she adds, “That we were not invited or really welcome in the men’s societies.”

Or at their golf outings.

A long-time golf enthusiast, Janis says she was unable to play in the men’s association events. Instead, she and her members were told to play tennis.

“So we started our own golf outing,” Janis says with a chuckle, “Screw them!”

Into the Big Apple

In 1985, just days after New York women marched to Mayor Koch demanding more women in high positions in city government, she got a call from the Department of Sanitation asking her if she knew anyone who interested in the position of Director of the Bureau of Building Management.

“Yes,” she replied. “Me!”

The job came with a handsome salary, a company car, and a move to New York City, away from her struggling steel erection company with clients who felt that they could delay payments to a woman-owned business. Like her former company’s union, the men were respectful at the Sanitation Department, and she calls her tenure at this position the “best time of my life.”

In 1992, she accepted a job at the Mayor’s Office of Construction under then-Commissioner of Buildings Rudy Rinaldi, and they jointly started the office’s first outreach to companies run by minorities and women. It had taken so long, she explains, because MWBE (Minorities and Women in Business Enterprise) goals and regulations were state and federal initiatives. Although the city used state and federal funding for projects, most outreach to women and minorities was still happening only by legislative fiat.