Gender in the Construction Industry: Literature Review and Comparative Survey of Men’s and Women’s Perceptions in UK Construction Consultancies

Abstract

For more than two decades, construction industry leaders have made attempts to attract more women into professional roles to ease skills shortages and diversify the workforce. However, the number of women working in the industry has not improved significantly. This paper reviews previous literature on gender diversity in the construction industry and disseminates findings from a survey which investigated whether there are significant differences in self-perception between men and women in construction consultancies operating in the United Kingdom (UK). The survey questionnaire was completed by 60 men and 57 women. Analysis of the result confirmed that women tend to follow 'zig-zag' career development paths and that 'global self-worth' of women over the age of 40 is the lowest among all ages. However, little variation was found on initiatives to improve retention of women in construction consultancies. The results reveal that both men and women regarded 'improved flexible working-arrangements', 'transparent promotion criteria', 'return to work training', 'outreach programmes to schools' as the most crucial initiatives to retain women. This reinforces the call for organizations to introduce innovative strategic plan to change the masculine culture of the construction profession and to modernise working practice away from the existing rather outdated traditional structure.

Inequalities in the Exercise and Continuity in Building Engineering in Spain. Factor Analysis Including Gender Perspective

“…In fact, when observing the data gathered by the Transparency Portal of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid [48], one of the higher education institutions with the widest number of courses and with the largest concentration of students in STEM careers, it can be seen that the percentage of women enrolled in studied related to the construction sector such as architecture, building engineering or civil engineering varies between 39%-in civil engineering-and 57% in architecture in 2019 (see Figure 1). Nonetheless, these figures correspond neither to those found in the Spanish construction labour market, nor to those found in other countries such as the United Kingdom where in the last 10 years, the percentage of women who graduated in STEM careers has risen to 55%, a rise that has not moved to the British labour market [12]. In the Spanish case, in accordance with the data provided by the Spanish National Statistical Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estadística-hereinafter INE), through the Labour Force Survey, from 2008 until 2019-, the percentage of women employed in the construction field has risen two points higher, from 7% to 9% (see Figure 2) [49].…”

“…However, despite endeavors to reach gender equality into the labour world, research shows that there is still a long way to go in order to attain this aim [2,4,7,[12][13][14]. At a global level, it is one of the sectors with the lowest women's participation rate [4,7,8,13,15,16].…”

“…In this process, roles, values and norms are assigned based on the person's gender. Furthermore, to support these work plan allocations, there has always been a wide range of societal beliefs and stereotypes, that is, a social imaginary [10,12,[19][20][21]. This approach associates the work in the construction sector with men, because of the strength, whereas jobs related to childcare are strongly associated with women because of affection, care or empathy, features deemed "distinctive and innate" among women [10,15,[22][23][24].…”

Cumulative Effects of Low-Level Lead Exposure and Chronic Physiological Stress on Hepatic Dysfunction—A Preliminary Study

“…Men were more represented in higher quartiles of lead exposure when compared to women. This partly due to occupation, where men tend to work in higher lead exposure occupations such as construction and as automobile mechanics [ 52 , 53 ].…”

Comparative Study of Existing Employment Regulatory in Malaysia and Selected Common Law Countries

“…In spite of the presence of such studies on the influence of management and demographic factors on employee turnover, there has been little focus on the effect of existing employment regulatory provisions. There is a need to improve workplace practice in the construction organisation (Harris, Naoum, Rizzuto, & Egbu, 2020). However, it would not be useful in absence of the guide from the employment regulatory.…”