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A crew of women around us are hammering, drilling and raising the frame of a tiny house at Hammerstone, which is housed in an old red dairy barn nestled among rolling hills and apple orchards near Ithaca, N.Y.

Hammerstone is one of a handful of small carpentry schools around the country where women teach other women skills that many of us missed out on, somehow.

Interest and enrollment in basic carpentry classes for women have increased in recent years, spurred on by the #MeToo movement and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic, according to the leaders of Hammerstone, Wild Abundance in western North Carolina, and Yestermorrow in Waitsfield, Vt.

The three schools arose independently of one another; Hammerstone and Wild Abundance launched about a decade ago.

In class at Hammerstone, we talk about the reasons women are interested in these courses, whether it’s because they were corralled into cooking class instead of shop in school; because our fathers or brothers didn’t think to teach us these skills; or simply because persistent cultural tropes tell girls from a young age that carpentry is for boys.