Perhaps you have passed by a construction site in your area and recognized that there is little to no women around working together with men.
For the public, this has become a norm; but for engineers, this statistic is somehow baffling – women are still perceived as incapable of what men can do in the world of engineering.
A report by the Office of National Statistics indicated that women only make up 11 percent of the construction workforce. If they do involve in construction, women are mostly behind a desk, doing design, management or secretarial roles.
The report further said in numbers the obvious: just 1% of construction workers are on site. It even said that the number of women working as roofers, bricklayers and glaziers is so low that it is immeasurable.
Source: Giphy
Holly Porter, who runs a networking group for female construction workers called Chicks With Bricks, shared, “The industry has been pretty stagnant in terms of ratios of women to men for quite a long time. There are certain areas where things are a lot better, like the design industry. But if you look at manual careers the proportion of women is absolutely minimal.”
Apart from that it’s hard to convince more women to join the construction workforce, not so many women already in the industry are staying – a study showed that more than half of female construction workers said they were treated worse than men because of their gender.
It’s safe to say now that what Fifth Harmony did with their ‘Work from Home’ music video is a false display – other than a dangerous site practice.
Sources: The Guardian | UCatt
