What men say when you ask if they truly think the built environment has a gender balance problem

Only 15% of people employed in construction are women; that’s according to the latest research by BuildUK. I’d wager many people won’t read past that sentence.

“Yeah, we know, another diversity article”, “women just don’t want to work in the industry”, “we’re doing our best to change it”, “our own organisation is way better than that” – any of these go through your mind? They’re all valid reactions – but don’t let that stop you engaging in the topic.

We feel like broken records thinking about it and talking about it too – especially as we’re typically always speaking to the same audience; people who broadly look and sound like us: women.

Conversations around gender often feel like they happen in an echo chamber

It’s a failure of equality and diversity efforts that many of the discussions and efforts around improving gender balance in this industry unintentionally feel exclusionary to men. Whether we like it or not, the majority of decision makers and influencers in this industry are male, and without their involvement, the change we are all seeking to make will be seriously limited. Conversations that do take place around gender therefore often feel like they happen in an echo chamber, and initiatives fail to gain broad engagement or impact.

At last month’s UKREiff conference we initiated a series of male listening exercises to begin rectifying this imbalance. At a closed session co-hosted with Kier in their space, we gathered men from across the sector representing consultancies, contractors and clients from the public and private sector and asked some simple questions: Do you truly see a problem with gender balance and what is really getting in the way of things changing?

Why flexible working isn’t enough

Let’s start with the blindingly obvious – there was significant difference in observed experience between public and private sector and the type of organisation. The public sector reported as overwhelmingly diverse, aided by strict processes and procedures around flexible working, client entertaining and job sharing. Consultancies – particularly at lower levels – and client organisations also claimed positive gender balance when compared with contractor organisations, again aided by more predictable work patterns, office locations and project types.

When people began to be really honest though, what emerged was how these policies and procedures can be little more than window dressing when it comes to enabling any tangible change. The men present identified their own struggles with actually taking the leave offered, with stating out loud that the hours they work are to do with their childcare responsibilities and with the inequality built into the system of after-hours client entertainment.

The role that client behaviour plays was also openly discussed; the sometimes unrealistic “always on” expectations, the “jump, how high” mentality from consultancies, and how leaders could better manage this. One attendee gave the example of a female colleague who doesn’t work Fridays and the boundary he sets with clients who call or request meetings that day to say conversations will need to wait until she returns the following week. Moreover, it demonstrated the ongoing battle between presenteeism and productivity that seems built into our UK “way of working”.

Presence is what is currently rewarded – and that doesn’t help men or women

It was acknowledged that presence is what is currently rewarded – and that doesn’t help men or women. There seemed an opportunity and a much broader conversation to be had around reframing the issue of flexible working as a productivity opportunity as opposed to a gendered one.

What men focus on and what women actually experience

What the overall discussion on flexible working also made abundantly clear, however, is the ongoing disconnect and miscommunication between men and women’s perceptions about the world of work. Unprompted, 90% of men’s focus when given open airtime to debate reasons behind gender inequality was on the issue of flexible working. In actual fact, time after time, what women report to actually hold them back at work is their lived experience. The day to day interactions they have with colleagues, their company cultures, and the lack of role models.

Listening to create real change

Highlighting issues such as benevolent sexism, women’s fear of speaking in meetings when outnumbered, statistics around interruptions, the confidence competence gap, exclusionary conversation topics and behaviour – this was all met with genuine curiosity in the room, as well as appetite to understand more.

Moreover, it’s the kind of awareness raising that can result in immediate change – with these male leaders able to return to work and do things differently as well as improve awareness among others. Those of us who work in this area are perhaps guilty of assuming everyone already knows this stuff, but that fails to take into account the fact that a huge and influential audience don’t intentionally seek out this information and are not fed it by any algorithm. The majority of men, well-intentioned, forward-thinking and keen for improved equality, will default to the more obvious structural, procedural barriers not least because these are arguably more straightforward to fix.

We intend to continue the conversation – and that starts with listening to more men’s views and perspectives on this topic – in an open minded, curious and positive way. Timing wise, we’re looking at an open goal, given that for the first time, the 220 mid-level women who applied to our Circle Academy programme this year reported feeling optimistic about their future in this industry as women. We hope that these interactions might start to usher in new ways of thinking and lead to a new statistic at the start of an article like this.

Ceri Moyers is a director at the Circle Partnership, which is a mentoring, development, and networking organisation for the UK built environment