Inspiring Women in Construction & Engineering 2024 – inspiration and perspiration
Reflecting on the 2024 Inspiring Women in Construction & Engineering conference, one of the stand-out presentations for me was from Lynda Bailey. An Inspector with the West Mildlands Police, Bailey described how she felt her 30-year career ebbing away as she became overwhelmed by the physical symptoms of menopause and the impact on her psychologically and on her mental wellbeing.
Now, Linda works with businesses and organisations through her consultancy, Making Menopause Work, to create work environments which support menopausal women. There is a sound business case for retaining the experience and expertise which an existing employee brings to your organisation. So why aren’t employers supporting this key demographic in their workforce?
Presumably because women are in the minority. Around 15% people who work in construction are women; similarly, in engineering, the figure is just 15.7%. Yet both industries are struggling to recruit new talent and suffer a further pinch point as female staff start to drop out in their forties. Much of the focus for the IWCE conference was how to make these industries both appealing to early career women and a sufficiently dynamic and supportive professional environment for them to want to stay.
Initiatives in construction
Construction company Wilmot Dixon has set an impressive target of a 50/50 gender split in its workforce by 2030 and deploying a number of initiatives to make it happen. From providing PPE designed for women so it fits, to enhanced maternity packages to offering professional development opportunities to upskill into green jobs, the focus is on making the workplace supportive and welcoming for everybody, whether that’s on site or in the office.
Morag Stuart’s career began at BAE systems and via the MOD, the Olympic Delivery Authority and Tideway, she is now Chief Programme Office for the New Hospital Programme. She describes working in the NHS as ‘the most transformative experience of my life…because the majority are women.’
Morag gave an impressive talk advocating for ‘speaking up’ and recounting some toe-curling stories of workplaces characterised by bullying, harrassment and sexual comments. She also delivered my stand-out quote from the day, ‘You can’t think an all-male executive is normal.’
Inspiration and perspiration
So, what should our ‘normal’ be? There was no shortage of ideas at the conference. In terms of recruitment, inclusive language in advertisements, anoymised cvs and gender-balanced interview panels can all help to address unconscious bias and lack of inclusivity. We also heard talks on supporting neurodivergent people in the workplace and improving racial equality within construction and engineering. Any of these measures would support a more inclusive and equitable recruitment process.
I would also contend that something like BAM’s policy of accommodating flexible working on site benefits everyone. Dads can pick the children up from school too and that helps to support the whole family.
Women make up 51% of the population so it makes no sense to limit opportunities to the remainder of the talent pool. Welcoming diversity of thought and approach, having good welfare facilities on site and family-friendly policies which make these industries a more viable proposition for women can only be good for business and the wider economy.
Thomas Edison is often quoted as saying, ‘Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.’ Seemingly it was actually an academic called Kate Sanborn who, in the 1890s, delivered a series of lectures in which she defined genius as a mix of ‘inspiration’ and ‘perspiration’. Possibly something only a woman going through the menopause could think of.
