PENSACOLA, Fla. - Sharon Parker grabbed a hammer and joined other mothers and daughters nailing together a pair of houses in hurricane-ravaged Pensacola. One is for Parker and her five children.

The 27-year-old customer service representative is participating in the Women Build project that included work on Sunday - Mother's Day - in 15 cities across the nation.

"This is my first time using a hammer to build anything," Parker said. "If you use it right, you get the job done."

Women Build is a partnership of Habitat for Humanity and the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores. It is an annual event that gives women a chance to help needy families. Female crews have built 650 Habitat houses in the United States.

"I love coming to a site and all you see is a slab of concrete and then all of a sudden in a few hours you have three or four walls up in one day," said Fannie Denise Marvin, a retired teacher and Habitat veteran. "That's just amazing. It's just a wonderful feeling."

While the walls go up fast, it will be months before the houses here can be finished because of difficulty getting subcontractors for electrical and heating-air conditioning work.

They're scarce because of a backlog of hurricane repair and reconstruction work, said Don Parmely, Habitat development director. Hurricane Ivan damaged or destroyed more than 80,000 units in the Florida Panhandle.

Women Build officials conduct training sessions in safety, framing, roofing, siding, insulation and interior finishing for new volunteers such as Parker.

Other cities with Mother's Day Women Build projects are Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Chicago; Des Moines, Iowa; Hartford, Conn.; Oklahoma City; Olympia, Wash.; Omaha, Neb.; Phoenix; Richmond, Va.; San Francisco; Salt Lake City; Tacoma, Wash.; and Winston-Salem, N.C.

Joanne Perry, 63, of Milton, a mother of four and grandmother of seven, has been volunteering for eight years, working with men and women. She is supervising the female crew here.

"The women feel more comfortable coming and hammering and sawing and learning things when there's no men around because some of them feel intimidated," Perry said. "They don't need to because all the men make just as many mistakes as the women do."