A recent survey released by Ontario Building and Construction Tradeswomen looked at the conditions women experience in the construction trades. The survey is excellent and the key takeaways deserve further comment. Especially when we are all thinking about how we’re going to staff our projects going forward in an environment when good skilled labour remains hard to find and retain. Here are the top points, with my comments.
Tradeswomen in Ontario demonstrate a strong commitment to working in the construction industry, with a significant majority planning to continue their careers over the long term.
Can you say this about a lot of the men you hire? Men tend to get into construction earlier in their lives (see the next point) and are often still looking for their real calling. Women do it in reverse, and therefore have made a positive decision to work in the trades rather than it just being “something to do.”
Many women discover trades later in their careers, suggesting untapped potential if they were reached earlier on through more targeted recruitment efforts.
What a great point this is. But, having raised two daughters, I can attest to how much young girls are attracted to the prospect of being cold, wet, dirty, sweaty, lifting heavy things, wearing ugly clothing, doing things that might damage your nails and working with icky substances and loud machinery. This is a generalization, of course – there is a percentage of women who love doing all these things. I think that percentage goes way up if it can be communicated to young women WHY they might want to go through these deprivations: the pride of having built something with your own hands using skills that few others have.
Recruitment and retention of tradeswomen in construction is significantly impacted by work site culture, which will require systemic change to address.
Let’s call this what it is: too many men in this industry still feel it’s their right to bully and belittle women, make sexualized comments to them and otherwise treat them in a manner different from how they would treat a male co-worker. In some cases (hopefully rare in this year of our Lord, 2025) it’s retrograde opinions about whether women should be doing “men’s work.” Guys with a principled position like this should be encouraged to go out and start their own male-only business rather than hang around poisoning yours. But in most I suspect basic immaturity, ignorance and a lack of social skills. Management has a role to play in stamping this behaviour out. When I ask contractor owners about whether they would tolerate cat-calling and other traditional forms of marginalization, the verdict is an indignant “No!”, coupled with blood-curdling threats of discipline or dismissal for offenders. But have they communicated that to their workforce? I’m not talking about months of sensitivity training here. I’m talking about simply telling the male members of the team, in five minutes, that they are expected to treat the women working with them the same way they treat the men. When it comes to penis jokes and other edgy sexual content, as well as come-ons and attempts to get a date, they should instead pretend they are speaking to their grandmothers. Those are two simple rules that will keep the guys out of most forms of trouble and make your workplace healthier for women…which you need it to be unless you want to miss out on half the potential workforce. Having helped the boys to understand how to stay out of trouble, make it very clear that there will be trouble – for them, not her – if they don’t stay inside the lines.
Tradeswomen face unique structural barriers in construction requiring sector-specific solutions that existing efforts have not gone far enough to address.
The survey is talking here about some things that are pretty easy to fix yet have not been fixed in most companies and on most jobsites. Women need somewhere to go to the bathroom without being in there with the men and without having to sit on a toilet seat covered in pee. Sorry, but we do real talk here. They also need PPE made for women and luckily there is lots of that available on the market now. We don’t ask the guys to bring their own toilet paper so we shouldn’t ask the women to provide their own tampons and pads. The only reason this stuff isn’t routinely addressed is because it’s a man running the company (see the next point) and he just hasn’t thought of it.
Another excellent subpoint here, and something much more difficult to address, is the availability of childcare. We work long hours, weird hours and unpredictable hours in this industry. Synching that up with school hours and what a daycare might offer is not going to be easy and may be impossible at times. Single mothers usually have custody of the children and those with a man in the house, let’s face it, are still taking on primary responsibility for the kids (with exceptions that prove the rule). I’m in controversial territory here, but I think this is something that is unlikely to change without another few million years of evolution. So the question becomes, do you want women in your workforce knowing that they will sometimes have difficulty juggling childcare, and may have to be accommodated somehow?
I’d frame the response this way: would you accommodate a man who had childcare challenges? Some do. Or would you demand that he hand the children to their mother and focus on his job? Do you avoid hiring women because you assume they will eventually let children get in the way? This is what is meant by “systemic” and “structural” barriers that come from the old way of doing things. We could make the choice to insist on it and refuse to change. The problem with that approach is that it cuts women out of the workforce. In this culture, historically, many people were fine with that but it was never a good thing for women or business. Digging in your heels and insisting you will never hire anyone who might have to take a day off to look after a sick child is a case of tripping over the dollars to get to the nickels.
I’ll humbly suggest that doing things to help both the men and women on your team look after their kids is just good management. Help with daycare costs. Flexible hours. Perhaps even making an arrangement for “company” daycare at some central location. Hard to afford, maybe, but, if you can afford it, it’s hard to think of anything you could do that would be more effective at telling your employees you value them. Which will result in them staying around longer, working better with you and becoming more effective at their jobs.
Advancing women to leadership positions is essential for the growth of the sector and a top priority for retention.
A lot of the issues above would go away pretty quickly with women in charge of teams or the company. I’ve observed a change here over perhaps the last decade where there is less tendancy to overlook women as potential leaders. That’s probably due to old prejudices falling away, allowing management to recognize that women are often better educated and more conscientious than the men on their workforce. Sorry, guys – it’s true. If it’s any consolation, you tend to be more aggressive risk-takers, which has its own pros and cons. In any event, management that overlooks women for leadership because they are women is just being silly. There are plenty of examples out there today illustrating how effective women can be in senior roles.
In fact, we’ll be hosting a whole bunch of them on March 3 for a one-day online webinar in partnership with the rest of our Annex construction channels. Check out Women In Construction and join us in March. Google “Annex Women In Construction” to find the registration page.
