UK: Will Quotas Help More Women Enter the Construction Industry?

Article here. Excerpt:

'I was interested, but not surprised, to read a recent report produced by CareerStructure.com into female employment within the construction sector. They found, for over half of the built environment professionals surveyed, that less than 10% of their team are currently female. This is yet another confirmation that the construction industry still has a long way to go before proving its credentials in equality.

The concern of the 400+ construction professionals surveyed is so great that more than half of them believe that a quota should be introduced to ensure that companies within the industry do employ a certain number of women in their workforce, never mind at board level. The use of quotas is backed by extensive research into gender imbalanced teams, which reinforce the importance of having a diverse work force of both men and women. In addition, where women are employed in the construction sector, they tend to have HR, Marketing, Admin and occasionally Finance roles.

Despite the concerns over the lack of women in construction, only 26% believed there was no barrier to entry for women seeking a career in the sector. Having worked in primarily male dominated sectors for most of my career, first as a research chemist and then entering construction, I personally have never regarded gender as a barrier to career progression and neither did Margaret Thatcher! In fact there have been many plusses to being female. Bright colours do make you stand out from the dark-suited crowd!'