Female Construction Workers Face Barriers
The need to recruit and retain women in the construction trades is obvious. Labor shortages are driving up construction costs and potentially affecting project quality and schedules. At the same time, just 4.3 percent of those employed in construction and extraction occupations were female in 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In construction management, 10.5 percent of the positions were held by women.
While this gender imbalance represents an opportunity for addressing the labor shortage, there are barriers to recruiting and retaining women in the skilled trades. The National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) and Ambition Theory surveyed and interviewed women working in the skilled construction trades in 2024. Here are some challenges and how to address them, as highlighted in the NCCER report:
More outreach to young women is needed. Visible female role models will help. So will offering paid internships or other opportunities for high school students and other young women to get a hands-on understanding of the work.
Create an equitable pathway to advancement, or risk losing your female employees. About 40 percent of the tradeswomen surveyed said they were thinking of leaving their companies—even though they enjoyed the work—because of limited opportunities to advance. Women across occupations face a higher bar for hiring and promotion; read how to increase equity and reduce or eliminate bias in recruiting, performance evaluations, and promotion.
Establish a formal mentoring program for people new to the trades. Encourage more experienced tradespeople to mentor women new to the work.
Make women on the jobsite feel like they belong in construction and are valued. The NCCER report had the following suggestions:
Provide safety gear like harnesses that fit women’s bodies, even if they cost a little more. Don’t make women ask for this—just provide it.
Keep the porta-johns clean, and consider getting a larger accessible porta-john. As one women said, “It’s pretty hard to be comfortable in a porta-john with a man’s urinal right in front of your face when you use it.”
Provide a private space for mothers to pump breast milk or breast-feed.
Vocational school students, 1942 (Howard R. Hollem, Library of Congress)
Hiring and retaining more women has the potential to reduce the labor shortage in construction trades; it can also help address the gender gap in pay. Across occupations in the U.S. in 2024, women working full-time earned just 83 cents for each dollar earned by men. Some of this difference is owing to “men’s work” like construction receiving higher compensation than work typically performed by women. Of course, all occupations should pay a fair wage, regardless of whether more women or men work in it. But for now, there are opportunities for women in the trades—and opportunities for construction companies to reduce their labor shortages.
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