Gender equality is under construction in the building industry

A woman’s place is on a build­ing site, accord­ing to a grow­ing num­ber of female engi­neers, site man­agers, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ors and archi­tects. Women have made sub­stan­tial inroads into con­struc­tion indus­try jobs over the past decade, but there’s a long way to go to make this male-dom­i­nat­ed, testos­terone-dri­ven indus­try more inclu­sive and diverse. 

Females are climb­ing to the top as crane dri­vers and show­ing their met­tle as steel fix­ers. But when it comes to trade roles such as brick­lay­ing and pipe fit­ting, women make up a tiny pro­por­tion of the staff – under 1%. 

For­mer car­pen­ter Kath Moore is man­ag­ing direc­tor of Women into Con­struc­tion, a not-for-prof­it group which runs train­ing schemes with build­ing com­pa­nies to help them hire more women. 

“There are real oppor­tu­ni­ties women can take part in and we have no trou­ble recruit­ing them,” she says. “Con­struc­tion is a well-paid job and offers great oppor­tu­ni­ties for pro­gres­sion.”  

Over­all, women make up about 12.5% of the UK’s con­struc­tion indus­try work­force, main­ly in engi­neer­ing, design and admin­is­tra­tive jobs. The indus­try has launched a push to increase female par­tic­i­pa­tion with some firms com­mit­ting to achiev­ing a 50:50 male and female ratio. Con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Wates Group has announced it is work­ing with WiC to bring 125 women into the indus­try by 2025. 

Women are put off the indus­try part­ly by fears of on-site sex­ism – 72% of female con­struc­tion work­ers in a sur­vey said they had expe­ri­enced some form of gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion in 2019. There’s also a per­cep­tion that this is back-break­ing, dusty and dirty work. 

“Because there are so few women in the trades, there isn’t much in the way of a role mod­el for oth­er women,” Moore notes. 

“We are cer­tain­ly see­ing more women inter­est­ed in engi­neer­ing, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ing and con­struc­tion man­age­ment roles. Some of the women we have on site have said hav­ing more women in those senior posi­tions makes for a much more pleas­ant site envi­ron­ment and makes it eas­i­er for them as tradeswomen to be accept­ed and get on with their work.”

Oth­er coun­tries are mak­ing strides in recruit­ing women to con­struc­tion. In the more heav­i­ly unionised US and in Aus­tralia and Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries, women have high­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion, Moore says. “We are lag­ging in this coun­try,” she adds. 

WiC is work­ing with con­struc­tion com­pa­nies to run cours­es for steel fix­ers, who arrange steel struc­tures for build­ings, and anoth­er for form mak­ers, who make the moulds for con­crete. 

The indus­try still has few senior female lead­ers, though this is grad­u­al­ly chang­ing. Ear­li­er this year, house­builder Tay­lor Wim­pey pro­mot­ed oper­a­tions direc­tor Jen­nie Daly to chief exec­u­tive, work­ing along­side chair­man Irene Dorner. Mean­while infra­struc­ture ser­vices com­pa­ny Amey is led by CEO Aman­da Fish­er. But there are pre­cious few exam­ples of female lead­ers among senior staff in con­struc­tion. To attract more women, hav­ing well-defined routes to pro­mo­tion and some strong role mod­els in senior man­age­ment roles will be vital. 

One advo­cate for female trade roles is Tik­Tok influ­encer Dar­cie Richards, a brick­lay­er whose videos encour­age women to get involved. She shows the fun side of work­ing on a build­ing site – work­ing out­doors, the sense of achieve­ment in fin­ish­ing a job, the fas­ci­na­tion with the dif­fer­ent tech­niques involved. This type of social media advo­ca­cy is impor­tant in attract­ing a more diverse work­force into the indus­try. 

An impor­tant dri­ver for increas­ing female par­tic­i­pa­tion is the skills short­age which is hit­ting con­struc­tion. With few­er Euro­pean work­ers after Brex­it and the pan­dem­ic, and many con­struc­tion and engi­neer­ing staff reach­ing retire­ment age, the indus­try faces a staffing crunch as many sig­nif­i­cant build­ing and infra­struc­ture projects get under way. But improv­ing diver­si­ty has broad­er pos­i­tive effects too, says a spokesman for con­struc­tion com­pa­ny BAM. 

“The ben­e­fit of hav­ing more women is that it enrich­es the qual­i­ty of deci­sion-mak­ing on con­struc­tion projects,” he says. 

As a build­ing man­age­ment com­pa­ny, BAM works with clients and com­pa­nies on build­ing stores, hos­pi­tals, leisure cen­tres and offices. “The pub­lic are using the facil­i­ties on a dai­ly basis, so it’s impor­tant to have a diverse work­force because you get a more holis­tic view of how the build­ings are used and need to be designed and built to sat­is­fy the peo­ple who are using them. This is how you get a rich­ness of deci­sion-mak­ing that isn’t male-cen­tric,” he says.

He adds that there is evi­dence in the indus­try that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty goes up when you get more women in the work­force.

Per­suad­ing more girls to con­sid­er careers in con­struc­tion is a task for schools and par­ents. Lucy Ellis, a geot­ech­ni­cal engi­neer work­ing on rail infra­struc­ture at Laing O’Rourke, says she was encour­aged by her father, him­self an engi­neer and able to help her get work expe­ri­ence.

Her work for Laing O’Rourke involves prob­lem-solv­ing on sites, lead­ing con­trac­tors and mak­ing sure work is under­tak­en in a safe man­ner.

Ellis believes atti­tudes about women in con­struc­tion are lag­ging behind the real­i­ty.

“The out­side per­cep­tion of the indus­try is chang­ing at a much slow­er rate than the indus­try itself.

“We’re also bring­ing in a wider com­mu­ni­ty of minori­ties, eth­nic minori­ties and dis­abled peo­ple. We’re mak­ing this indus­try more approach­able for peo­ple who pre­vi­ous­ly didn’t feel it was for them,” Ellis says.

While there may still be sex­ist dinosaurs in the indus­try, she says that in her expe­ri­ence most male col­leagues have been more than hap­py to help female work­ers. “Females aren’t com­ing into the indus­try and being pushed out by males. Dur­ing most of my career, the men I’ve worked with have pulled me up and helped me get to the posi­tion that I am in today and they are real­ly encour­ag­ing future gen­er­a­tions whether that be their daugh­ters or help­ing with recruit­ment events.”

To attract more women, con­struc­tion needs to breed new kind of man too: those who are com­mit­ted to mak­ing the aim for diver­si­ty a real­i­ty.