Women’s career development in the construction industry across 15 years: main barriers

Abstract

Purpose Through a systematic literature review covering 15 years, this paper aims to identify and annotate the barriers that hinder the career development of women working in the construction industry. Furthermore, it describes publication trends that have contributed to the evolution of the topic. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review of credible sources in different databases has been carried out for the period from 2000 to 2015. By means of thematic analysis, a data set of 60 articles has been analysed. Findings The topic has been and still is of interest to the research community. Women who work in the construction industry in different countries confront numerous career barriers, the more frequent being the difficulty of balancing work and family, and the lack of professionalism in human resource management. Research limitations/implications Some publications related to the topic might have been inadvertently omitted. Hopefully, this paper can be valuable for informing future research directions. Practical implications The paper is useful to human resource managers to understand how their practices influence women’s career development, gender equity and organisational injustice, and how to improve them. It informs policies to reduce gender discrimination and guides researchers interested in gender diversity in the industry. Social implications A clear vision of career barriers affecting women is required to find solutions and improve the fairness and justice of business practices. Originality/value Previous studies do not offer a comprehensive and up-to-date review covering such a wide time period and so many countries. It will have implications in the identification of initiatives critical to achieving lasting change in gender equity in the construction industry.

Conditioned openings and restraints: The meaning‐making of women professionals breaking into the male‐dominated sector of forestry

“…In particular, preconceptions about women's lack of technical skills and their need to prove their ability before being recognized as competent professionals is evident both in the survey responses and in corresponding studies in other male-dominated industries (cf. Fielden et al, 2000;Lu & Sexton, 2010;Navarro-Astor et al, 2017;Smith, 2013). As long as the gendered constructions of skills remain associated with specific types of men and masculinities, the strategy of simply increasing the number of women in the industry does not directly challenge dominant discourses.…”

“…Fielden et al (2000), reviewing the research on women in the construction industry in the UK, argue that one type of barrier faced by women relates to a general disbelief in their technical ability to do their job. A pattern of women tending to be ‘on trial', with men refusing to listen to them until they are convinced that women are capable and having to work harder and be more accountable than male colleagues is reported by Smith (2013), Lu and Sexton (2010) and Navarro‐Astor et al (2017).…”

“…The main barriers encountered were a culture ‘which militated against women participation' (p. 246) by both discrimination and exclusion. Dainty et al (2000) concluded that construction work is seen as incompatible with women's expected societal role as mothers and caregivers (see also Dainty & Lingard, 2006; Navarro‐Astor et al, 2017).…”

“…More specifically, the aim is to explore how women forestry professionals articulate and interpret their experiences of being a woman and a professional in the male‐dominated context of forestry organizations. In addition to increasing our knowledge of the gendering of forestry occupations and organizations, the study — by drawing on forestry — also contributes to the literature on the experiences and perceptions of women working in male‐dominated industries; that literature otherwise tends to be empirically grounded in the construction sector (Dainty & Lingard, 2006; Fielden, Davidson, Gale, & Davey, 2000; Lu & Sexton, 2010; Navarro‐Astor, Román‐Onsalo, & Infante‐Perea, 2017), followed by mining (Eveline & Booth, 2002; Fältholm & Norberg, 2017; Mayes & Pini, 2014; Tallichet, 2000), the oil industry (Miller, 2004; Williams, Kilanski, & Muller, 2014) and firefighting (Ainsworth, Batty, & Burchielli, 2014). The article is structured as follows: the gendering of forestry professionals as well as the literature on women working in male‐dominated industries is outlined below.…”

Changes in Job Situations for Women Workforce in Construction during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The construction industry is one of the most male-dominated industries with greatest degree of gender segregation (Ness, 2012). There is a large collection studies on barriers faced by women and strategies aimed at improving their retention and career progression in the industry (Navarro-Astor, Román-Onsalo and Infante-Perea, 2017). Moreover, the recruitment of women into the industry has always been a challenge as demonstrated by previous studies that attempted to explore this subject area with the focus set on attracting and retaining female students in construction management undergraduate degree program (e.g., Bigelow, Saseendran and Elliott, 2018;Escamilla, Ostadalimakhmalbaf and Bigelow, 2016;Oo, Li and Zhang, 2018).…”