Compared with how often the industry publicly agonises about the migrant skills crisis or the ageing workforce crisis, construction’s long-standing difficulties in accessing the female workforce are barely on the agenda. Some individual businesses are doing great work in promoting women; but what should the industry do as a whole, and is there an opportunity, as construction undergoes significant change, to also change our thinking about what the workforce should be?

This issue was brought home to me when I recently attended a select committee hearing at the Scottish Parliament on behalf of the Construction Leadership Council. One issue where the panel of enquiry witnesses found common ground was in response to a question on gender. Not because we agreed, but because none of us on the all-male panel was properly prepared to address the question and none of us could come up with satisfactory suggestions for a solution. 

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