Women in Construction: How Diversity Is Breathing New Life to the Industry

The construction industry has long been a male-dominated field. Even today, with more women in construction jobs than ever before, women only comprise 10.9 percent of the workforce in this sector. However, there are now clear signs of change on the horizon. As more and more women get involved in the construction industry, they are bringing new life to the field, and the industry is changing for the better because of their involvement. And with the growing need for more construction workers in the United States (over 2 million new job openings expected in 2022 alone), there are more opportunities than ever for more women to find their place in this exciting field. Let's take a closer look at this trend and see how this fresh diversity is changing the construction landscape.

A Look at the Numbers

To drive home what we're currently seeing, let's look at some promising statistics from the past few years:

• The overall number of women entering the construction sector is increasing rapidly. Between 2017 and 2018 alone, the number of women working in construction increased by nearly 18 percent. The overall percentage of women to men in the industry is currently growing by about 1 percent per year.
• The number of women in leadership positions is increasing, too. Approximately 31percent? 31 of women in construction jobs hold management positions, and 75 percent of construction companies have promoted women to senior positions. Among the top 100 construction firms, 44 percent have placed women in executive roles (16 percent in C-level positions).
• There are more resources and pathways for women seeking to enter construction than ever before. With growing staffing shortages nationwide, more construction companies are actively recruiting women to fill their job openings, and more states are offering training pathways for women desiring to enter the industry. Here in New York, training programs like Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) are actively preparing women for roles in the industry, and NYC's construction unions are reserving apprenticeship slots for them. LaGuardia Community College now offers a Professional Construction Trades certification program that favors women, and similar programs in many states are following suit.

Women in Leadership in Construction

One of the most exciting developments is that a growing number of women are taking on leadership roles in construction, with highly positive results. Not only are women increasingly being promoted into executive and C-level positions, but the number of women owners in construction companies has shot up 64 percent between 2014-2019, and about 13 percent of construction-related firms are now women-owned.

As women take on more of these leadership roles, they are bringing new perspectives and ideas to the table that are benefiting both their respective companies and the industry as a whole. A recent eye-opening report by McKinsey & Company reveals that companies favoring gender diversity have a 25 percent higher likelihood of achieving above-average profitability. The report specifically found this to be true in the construction sector: companies with women in leadership roles tend to perform better financially than those without this diversity.

In plain English: when women take the lead in construction companies, those companies make more money. This, of course, is incentivizing even more companies within the construction sector to diversify their leadership.Women

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