Have you looked at your company photos recently? Last week, I went to a breakfast meeting where I was inspired by the wonderful Steve Edge, who runs his own branding agency. He spent 20 minutes making us all laugh at his unpublishable description of the nearly always awful and faintly incriminating “mug shots” that accompany CVs. 

His point was that most of us in the construction industry could do a better job of representing ourselves positively, but it got me thinking that, above and beyond the aesthetics of company photos, the biggest problem is who is in them. As I once heard somebody say: “If you have an all-white, all-male board, don’t take a group photograph!” 

The truth is, we have the worst gender balance within any industry – less than 1% of the 800,000 construction and building trades workers are women, and even when you add architects, planners and surveyors, this only rises to 18%. So, as women we need to be more visible, to make ourselves more noticeable and to ensure our voices are heard at every level. 

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