Barriers Contributing to the Underrepresentation of Women in the Construction Industry

Abstract

In recent years, the representation of women in the working population has improved. However, despite significant efforts in both academia and industry, the construction sector is still a male-dominated industry both numerically and hierarchically. This is a global issue, and the UK is not an exception. The gender imbalance in the UK construction industry starts with construction education and worsens as women progress in their careers. That is why the concept of the “leaky pipeline” is used in the literature to describe the problem of recruitment and retention of women in the industry. To investigate the barriers contributing to the underrepresentation of women in the UK construction industry, this research systematically reviews the literature from four databases from 1993 to 2023. Industry perception, motivation, environment, skill gap, role models, well-being, organisational support, satisfaction, career development, family responsibilities, and institutionalised inequality were identified as the main barriers for women in joining and progressing in the construction sector. This paper draws upon social cognitive career theory to discuss these barriers, the identified barriers were categorised into four dimensions: contextual influence, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and goal orientation. In addition, the Super’s career development model was used to map these barriers to the leaky pipeline of women in the construction industry in four stages: exploring (pre-career), establishing (early career), mid-career, and late career. The research finds that industry perception and environment were barriers that prevented women from progressing in pre-career and early career, while family responsibilities were barriers that prevented women from progressing in mid-career and late career. The research provides an overview of the existing studies on barriers contributing to the underrepresentation of women in the construction industry. Also, this study shows that women face different barriers in their career development in the UK construction industry. This suggests that a combination of solutions should be considered to tackle the problem.