Much has been made over the last few years about the representation and position of women within construction, but is the industry improving on it’s promise to improve gender representation within its workforce, encourage better pipeline recruitment and reduce the enormous gender pay gap?

As many thought leadership pieces, reports and studies have shown, the vast gender disparity that sits at the heart of construction and engineering is as much behavioural and perception based, as it is skills or education based. For all the good work educators, governments and employers are doing to improve access to funding, training and career coaching, there are assumptive pressures at play that speak to wider cultural issues and a historical understanding of what construction is and who the workplace is “for” that will take a cross-generational effort to shift.

The “fix”, as many experts have cited, is cross-industry, cross-peer and full spectrum – for example, improvements to apprenticeships and the introduction of the levy, or adjusting the levy to reward companies addressing inherent biases may positively impact a company’s bottom line, recruitment career path and approachability, but it doesn’t address on-site sexism, a lack of representative leaders and mentors, or cultural assumptions around woman’s “place” within this traditionally male dominated workplace.

However, change has to start somewhere, and in many cases change is afoot.

How many women work in construction in the UK?

• 13% of the construction industry is made up of women in the UK, (and it’s even lower in some Western hemisphere countries, such as the US). In some parts of the industry, recent improvements in hiring have been made. 320,000 women work in construction in the UK, and 37% of new entrants into the industry from higher education are women.

How many women work in engineering in the UK?

• In the UK, 8% of all engineers are women. Perceptions of the engineering industry fare better than those in construction: 4% of girls 16-18 would consider a career in engineering compared to 51.9% of boys, and at A-Level and within further education female learners receive better STEM based results than males:
  
  
• In all STEM A-Levels except Chemistry more girls get A*-C grades than boys,
  
  
• 8% of female engineering students get a First or Upper Second, compared to 74.6% of male students,
• 7% of female engineering graduates enter full time work, compared to 58.8% of all female graduates and 61.9% of male engineering graduates.
  
  
• However improvements do need to be made, especially compared to our nearest neighbours doing more to balance representative equity in the industry: The UK has the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe, while Latvia, Bulgaria and Cyprus lead with nearly 30%.

Does STEM outreach work?

• Yes – “the compelling evidence showed STEM outreach can and does work: young people attending a STEM careers activity in the previous 12 months were over 3 times as likely to consider a career in engineering than those who had not”
  
  
• However, in the report STEM – The Hidden Workforce, there is still a gulf in actionable hiring between education/career gaps and work. Despite the well documented need for engineering talent, and the applicability of young, female graduates to make a career within engineering (not to mention superior exam results at undergraduate level), “63% of returners believe the biggest barrier is bias in the recruitment process and 85% of returners (to the industry) feel that they ‘definitely have’ or ‘may have’ been the victim of direct bias” and despite high levels of qualification only “60% of the women graduates in 2016 went on to work in engineering and technology”.

Post-pandemic – Women in Work

• The negative effects of the pandemic were felt more acutely by minorities and working mothers – mothers are 1.5 times more likely than fathers to have either lost their job or quit since the start of the first lockdown and are also more likely to have been furloughed. Among those who are still working for pay, mothers spent less time on paid work throughout the day. The Fawcett Society also found 35% of working mothers have lost work or hours due to a lack of childcare support during the pandemic.
  
  
• The fact that construction already bears so little resemblance to the overall makeup of the UK’s working demographic, it is worth bearing in mind that the current state of employment affairs in the UK is uniquely high pressure. Construction, alongside Hospitality and Healthcare, currently have some of the highest job vacancy rates in the country per sector. This alone should stipulate the need for better representation and better channels for employment.

The bottom line

Despite positive work done by educators and higher education to channel talent into engineering and construction, work does still need to be done. However, all the signs point to more equity in the workplace, albeit slowly outlaid.

More inclusive, tech-led solutions to work flow and efficiencies, which improve collaborative work and reduce the need for labour-oriented (and almost entirely male) projects are increasing – this will go some way in reducing the assumptive nature of construction and engineering as a “male” career path.

Responsibility is, however, mostly in the hands of recruiters and individual companies, bridging the gap between education and work, onboarding with more vigor and inclusivity,  and taking more ownership of changing the career path narrative for women who love STEM but don’t feel like engineering or construction is for them.