Women Making Strides in Construction
Date Posted: July 2, 2019
Posted In: Workforce,
From AGCMO: According to a March 2019 article in Construction Dive, the percentage of women in construction has hovered somewhere between 9 and 10 percent since 1996 and is currently at 9.9 percent. But of the 8.3 million persons who were employed in field production of the construction and extraction industries in 2018, only 3.4 percent were women.
Building inspectors (14 percent), painters (7.2 percent) and helpers (5.6 percent ) saw the highest participation by women last year, with their percentages in trades like carpet installation, carpenters, drywall hangers and electricians landing somewhere between 1.9 and 3.7 percent.
However, the news isn’t all doom and gloom for the future of women in the trades. Construction Dive reports, “There are stories that have recently popped up about more young women entering apprenticeships and other training programs, a group that could grow the currently dismal statistics if organizers can draw and maintain enough interest.”
Another positive trend is that the percentage of women classified as construction managers, has grown from 5.9 percent in 2003 to 7.7 percent in 2018. Keeping with the theory that “a rising tide raises all boats,” having more women in project management roles should also bode well for women in other constructions jobs, including the field.
Statistics gathered by the National Association of Women in Construction also show a less-than-rosy picture of the industry: https://www.nawic.org/nawic/Statistics.asp Overall, women in the U.S. earn on average 81.1 percent of what men make. However, hidden among NAWIC’s numbers is positive news: The gender pay gap is much narrower in the construction industry than it is in other industries. In construction, women earn on average 95.7 percent of what men make. Source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2016/pdf/home.pdf, Table 19
When we asked some of our members to tell us about some of their female employees within the trades, they shared several success stories: