All talk, no action on women’s roles

The industry has been talking for years about the need to attract more women into construction. But if companies are really serious about this, they will have to make some pretty hefty changes to the way that they are organised.

That is the conclusion of a new research report, Constructing Women Leaders, from Salford University’s School of the Built Environment. The 12-month study, which concentrated on the North West, looked at what stopped women making it into senior positions within construction businesses.

Only around 9% of the construction workforce are women, 84% of whom hold secretarial posts with only 10% in the professions.

Perhaps predictably, balancing work and home commitments emerged as a big barrier to women reaching senior management positions. One 38-year-old associate architect told researchers: ‘If I’d chosen not to have children, I would have been an associate probably about four to five years before. As far as my employer is concerned I didn’t have as much time to commit. I had distractions by having children and I was not here because of maternity leave.’

The lack of women at the top has a knock-on effect throughout the organisation as there are no role models for younger women, and female middle managers feel isolated.

In addition to the problems associated with family commitments, the report identified 17 other barriers to women reaching leadership positions, more than for any other sector it reviewed. These included inequality in recruitment, training opportunities and pay, the masculine culture, long hours and lack of role models.