Q&A With A Woman In Construction

I’ve always thought of construction and engineering as industries that shape the world around us. Roads, hospitals, houses, the local kebab shop - someone in the engineering and construction industry had to build all of those things.

Despite it being such a huge influence on our communities, it’s crazy that women only make up 12% of the workers who do all of this stuff.

I wanted to learn more about what it’s like to be a woman in engineering and construction, so I thought I’d chat to my flatmate Alice, who’s a graduate civil engineer. As I meet with her, Al is seated on a tattered old lounge in a sharehouse living room. She wears a pair of fluffy slippers and is watching ‘Catfish’ on a (very) cheap flatscreen tv.

 It’s an unconventional outfit and locale for an interview, but Alice isn’t just a civil engineer, she’s also one of my flatmates.

Q: Al, you're a site engineer, what does that mean?

Site Engineers work on construction sites. I work for the builder, so we basically help interpret drawings, check quality… I don’t know what site engineers are. It’s an engineer who works on site!

Q: How did you end up in Civil Engineering?

I can tell you the long story. In Year 10 I did that bloody career test thing and it came out that I should be a civil engineer and I thought at that time, “you know what I should definitely not do… what these people did from their box-ticking exercise, no way”. But then it got to Year 12 and my career teacher once again said, “you’re pretty good at maths, maybe you should do engineering?” and I thought about it. 

I was either going to do that, or education, but then my parents were like, “you can do education later”. So I started with a flexible first year of engineering and then I decided to do civil, because it’s much more tangible than a lot of the other disciplines. It’s also general, so if you want to do something else, then it’s easy to go from civil engineering to that.

Q: How would you say the gender disparity in construction and engineering is reflected in your daily workplace experience?

I guess I work in a slightly different environment, in that my direct team are all females, which is very unusual in the construction environment. The other three engineers that I work directly with are females. But, basically everyone else on site are males and, well, there are a lot of elements to it. 

It’s hard to discern between what is just my own personal experience and what would be experienced by women at large. I think for me personally, people are more censored around girls and so having a girl around takes a little bit of the edge out of the room. That’s probably not the right word, but people apologise for swearing and they are less likely to yell at me in comparison to the guys my age. They are more likely to, I guess, just be softer.

Q: Working in such a male-dominated industry, what are some of the bigger challenges a female engineer or construction worker will face?

Making friendships around site. I grew up with brothers on a farm, so I am pretty used to being in more masculine environments and don’t personally find it too hard. However I do find that to fit in in groups of mainly males you can’t act too precious, and so I find myself putting on a more maculine persona when on site. I think if the industry was more balanced both boys and girls would be able to express themselves more authentically. I think that generally, just the more women you have the easier it will get.

Q: What do females bring to the construction industry that men don’t?

If the construction industry had more girls, it would be way more productive. There’s a lot of politics on site that are very competitive and aggressive and generally quite testosterone-fuelled in my opinion. I think if you had an even split it would have potentially more of a team dynamic.

Q: What would you say needs to be changed so that there are more females in the construction and engineering industry?

Logically, not enough girls do maths in High School. Then, not enough girls do engineering at University. But aside from that, the girls who do engineering in university often don’t go into construction, because it is typically a bit more “blokey” place to be. So, you need to change the perspective from the high school level to get more girls in, but then you also need to change the culture once girls get there. 

The more girls there are, the easier it will be for the girls that are coming in. My company has quotas and I actually think that that’s a good thing, because by the time I got there, I’m not the only girl; you don’t have to wear that sort of responsibility.

Q: What do you think of quotas in universities for STEM subjects?

I think that they are generally good. It’s hard to be in a minority and I think that people potentially drop out if they’re in a really heavy minority because they don’t find people that they can relate to. Like if you’re the only girl in a class of 30, yeah sure you’ll get along, but you won’t have your “girl gang” I guess. 

Whereas, if it’s 50/50, you have options and you don’t just have to become a certain type of person. Therefore, you attract a wider range of people to STEM if it’s more gender diverse, and you also keep a wider group of people as well.

Q: If you hadn’t decided on a career in Civil Engineering, what do you currently think you would’ve done instead?

If I didn’t do civil engineering, I was also looking at politics, philosophy… what’s the PPE? Economics! I guess I also studied commerce with business economics, so in reality I would’ve probably done some form of economics. That’s a shit answer! I don’t know really!

I reckon it was super interesting to actually sit down with Alice and ask her what it’s like - one of the biggest things I took away from it is that the industry really needs those pioneers like her, who are getting out there and paving the way for women to enter the industry after them. 

If you’re keen to learn more about what it’s like to work in construction, take a look at our Academy The New-Print Of Construction. It's a super-short course we've made in conjunction with Construction Skills Queensland (CSQ) to give you the lowdown on what building a modern career in contruction is really like. Take a look over here!