Online startup fits women with personal protective equipment clothing

Premium top grain soft cowhide leather gloves for small hands as available through SeeHerWork. Premium top grain soft cowhide leather gloves for small hands as available through SeeHerWork. Photo: Courtesy Of SeeHerWork Photo: Courtesy Of SeeHerWork Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Online startup fits women with personal protective equipment clothing 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Houston-based SeeHerWork designer and seller of personal protective equipment (PPE) for tradeswomen is helping fill out a dearth of options in the workwear market.

Launched in September, the online startup currently sells garment pieces with female body proportions in mind. Company founder and CEO Jane Henry, who has served as a management consultant for energy companies like BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil asserted many corporations continue overlooking women when furnishing them with work clothes.

Women "don't want pink it and shrink it," Henry said. "If folks are still taking men's sizes and shrinking them down, they're failing these women. ... It needs to be for the female form."



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Among the products being featured on the company's website, is a safety vest in fluorescent yellow green and specifically designed to fit a woman's body. It is priced at $29.99 and available in sizes extra small through double-extra large. There are also a couple of long-sleeved shirts for $35.99 and $44.90.

Henry first realized the disparity in women's protective apparel after doing Hurricane Harvey recovery, saying she was "appalled" at the difficulty to find useful clothing and equipment.

She said it took a lot of extra effort to pick things up with oversized gloves, for instance. This prompted her to conduct a study on the issue at Rice University, finding out that "it's an endemic, industry-wide problem," she said.

There are gloves included on the website, of course. Two different types, each sold at $39.95. Work pants, footwear and coveralls are on their way, too, according to the website.



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SeeHerWork is in partnership with the Rice Angel Network entrepreneurial program. At Rice, Henry conducted focus groups with hundreds of women to help determine the best-fitting PPE clothing.

"We're talking to ladies on the ground floor. ... We're using female patterns to build out our products, but we're also listening to what the females need," Henry said. "We want theses women to feel powerful, to feel safe."

She argues that STEM jobs are not effectively using the women working in them.

"We want to keep women safe and we want to attract and retain more women in these careers," she said. "Clothing and equipment matter."