Women In Construction

Women remain massively underrepresented in the sector. If we have any hope of overcoming the massive skills shortage in the UK the industry is faced with, it will become ever more crucial to encourage women to choose a career in construction.

With an aging workforce and fewer young people choosing construction, the industry remains in dire need of those with the appropriate skills. The UK needs to take on 400,000 new people each year to build all the new homes we need.

Women choosing construction

Although still a very much male-dominated industry, it's increasingly common to find women working in all fields of construction, from plumbing and bricklaying to buying and bid writing. It does seem that gender equality in the UK has come a long way over the last century; however, we've still got a long way to go.

How do we encourage women into construction

If more women are going to choose a job in construction, some things will have to change. And perhaps the most important of these being the gender pay gap.

The construction industry employs a massive 1.2 million people in the UK and only 11% of these employees are women. This low figure is no suprise when you know that shockingly women are paid, on average. 12% less than their male counterparts in the same role. This glaring disparity has to be addressed if the UK has any hope of women seeing constuction as an attractive career option.

Not just for boys

Sadly you've only got to steph inside a toy store to see that gender stereotyping is still alive and well. Girls choose from the range of baking or beauty related toys - usually in pink packaging - and boys get to pick from the building and construction toys in the blue boxes. So it's not really suprising that most girls just don't imagine themselves being a health ans safety officer or quantity surveyor when they grow up. To avoid getting left behind, the building sector needs to embrace more firmly our age of equality.