Female Management Roles in Construction

The subject presented in this article is about the neglect of women in carrying out corporate roles despite their education in the areas of expertise. Even though there has been affirmative action and equal opportunity embedded in the strategy of corporate recruitment, the needs of the woman civil engineer has not been fully met. It has been very difficult for the women to get to the top most management positions. The lack of enough education, training as well as experience before, to some point, explained the problems women experienced in getting management jobs. Nowadays, a large and indeed an increasing percentage of women in UK are as well competent as any man. This has led to a better gender allocation of jobs, but occupational isolation has remained a chief problem. Even though more women now are in management positions, they tend to be bunched at lower management levels and in less important areas. In all cases, though, their way in to top managerial jobs has ever been severely restricted. Moreover, educational systems, the mass media as well as the recruitment and procedures of promotion have habitually institutionalized particular gender biases and unconsciously continue to effect discriminatory practices with in relation to women.

Governments, enterprises together with organizations, have from the time in the past explored ways of eradicating discrimination as portrayed in this article making sure that there is gender equality. Perhaps the greatest obstacle is still how to make the structures within organizations more sensitive to gender equality concepts and practice. All workers’ and employers’ associations have a predominantly important role to play in motivating workplace change in attitudes as well as practices to promote gender equality by and large and to identify and encourage definite strategies to enable women to get to higher levels of management and break through this glass ceiling. This article explains the plight of the woman and desires that the women ought to be accorded rights which are equal to those of male counterparts. The point here is that there should be no unfairness, but also that women ought to be able to take pleasure in all their rights, which demands the identification together with the elimination of obstacles other than the ones of a legal nature. It is here discussed that women are entitled to the gratification of all human rights, including those pertinent to economic development together with resources. The absence of equal right of entry to resources and the opportunities represents a refutation of universal human rights, thus creating obstacles to fairness between women and men that carry on women’s economic inequality and also poverty. Equal treatment women as indicated in this article in economic and social life is therefore a precondition for the full achievement of these rights. In addition, organization culture suggests that the nature of the work environment especially in the construction sector faced by women who aspire to management positions determines their fate more than their own traits, skills and behaviors. Behavioral double-binds, communication and leadership styles, old boy networks, tokenism, and differing male and female attitudes toward power are other behavioral and cultural explanations.

It’s undoubtedly that remarkable progress has been achieved in boosting women presentation into professions and managerial jobs over recent years. In the UK, the number of women in the executive management positions is relatively low compared to their qualifications. They comprised a very small number of executives in the surveyed organizations in this article. All through, the article is in pursuit of equality in the management to be shown in the female civil engineers of UK. It seeks to nullify the notion that professionalism is a concept dominated by men. The work in the construction industry is very robust at times and will at call upon those in management to actively participate in it.

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Entering a male dominated workplace is somewhat uncomfortable to the full action that can be taken by the woman in doing her chores as a manager. There could be sexual jokes and a language that the woman could not tolerate. The setting of a civil engineering job portrays a lot of physicality and the context therein could affect women as they may feel uncomfortable. The representation of women in the field of civil engineering is very poor especially at the senior levels of management. The structure and organization of the civil engineering firms seem to have a lot of problems for the female gender.

Methodology and Participant profile

The article made use of qualitative research by adopting an ethnographic approach to data collection, with interviews which were semi-structured as the main method. The main idea to be researched here was to establish the experience of women construction engineers in their profession. This qualitative research goes against the grain of using numerical data to obtain results. The approach used in this article has organized narrative or words to discover themes and relationships in a non-numerical way. Qualitative data is that which is not easily measurable and it is not completely objective but may require judgment and interpretation. The researcher has also played an important role in the experiment unintentionally by interpreting the results; although as the research data analysis of the results this paper was completed by getting reference to many other sources and thus, it is felt that this increased the rigor and validity of this qualitative work.

The ethnographic approach to this work is most appropriate as both sets of participants (women in design and building sites) are all human beings. This means that general patterns of experiences in the work are compatible – except in different or exceptional contexts. Throughout the study justification is given for actions. Answers for questions which the researcher may have asked are answered giving this research rigor and validity. However if being very critical, one could mention that this is not a valid time scale and therefore could be a weakness also.

The article’s aim is to identify to what extent the women in civil engineering and constructions have been incorporated in the management level in the industry. Information for this research was gathered using an ethnographic approach. To do this observation plus detailed field notes were taken. In this stage of the research article, (the abstract) the information is very superficial but does give an interest to continue reading. This qualitative researcher blends and montages to form a new comprehensive creation or a new meaningful whole out of distinct parts of what the researcher is studying or in other words out of reality. The researcher thus can be described as a quilt-maker; a quilt-maker who uses a muti-method approach to compose a complex, and richer study of the issues affecting women civil engineers in UK. Consequently it has no essential definition, for it is never just one thing. It apparently attempts to define cultural studies. After that, some academic and disciplinary resistances to qualitative research are studied and followed by a discussion of the major differences in research styles between qualitative and quantitative approaches.

In brief, qualitative approach emphasizes value, ethnographic prose, rich descriptions, answering the “how” question… On the other hand, the quantitative approach emphasizes measurements, value-free, analysis of relationships, objective, empirical methods, impersonal third person prose… The history of qualitative research is summarized in several eras. In each of these eras, the researchers have been influenced by their political hopes and ideologies, discovering findings in their research that confirmed prior theories or beliefs. Qualitative research in the first place focused on the objective, the norms, and the classical ethnography. Later on the modernist phase known by the “golden age” followed. The second era stressed the analysis of the qualitative materials in standardized statistical forms. The blurred genres gave way to a more pluralistic, open ended perspective. The scientific form of the golden age ended on the door steps of a wide range of paradigms, and ways of collecting and analyzing empirical materials. The fourth moment or the crisis of representation in the mid-1980s was the result of the blurred genres. The researcher in the article here questioned models of truth, methods, and representations in establishing the plight of women civil engineers.

Identification and Discussion of Strength and Weaknesses

The challenge that has been there for many women in the civil engineering field has been that of balancing the work and no-work roles. This has been a great burden at home and also at the workplace which may not really be the case with men. Though the discrimination from the social and organization is hard to shatter, sometimes it is women themselves who are reluctant to take the first step to break the ceiling which originate from their mind. Moreover, hard working is the fundamental weapon that leads every person to the way of success. There are no any tricks or techniques to break this wall that has been placed before them. Every successful woman just proves their capability with tremendous effort.

To counter such factors, a jointed effort is essential on all levels by all kinds of organizations and institutions. As seen in this article, the current anti-discrimination legislation and equal opportunity initiatives assume that equality will be achieved if organizations treat women the same as men.

The approach draws primarily on ‘liberal’, sameness notion of equality where sameness is judged against a unitary standard of male characteristics and behavior. This is problematic because it ignores women’s relationship to the private sphere. Unless difference is recognized and taken into account women will not be able to compete equally and on their own (rather than on male) terms. Such issues like the benefits of maternity leave, sabbaticals, the phasing in of working hours, working one day a week from home, employees can return to work after the first, second and even third child are a major threat to the management in construction works. Whereas, a good company lets a person to bring their whole self to work, women could find it challenging to embark on such issues. Feeling stretched is not a dereliction of duty” and there we will keep working on implementing more policies which benefit women in the work environment. Positive action, equal opportunity policies, prevention of sexual harassment policies, diversity management, mentoring, and the tracking and monitoring of the progress of both men and women were identified as useful ways to level the playing field and improve gender equality in training, recruitment and promotion at organizational level.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is the commitment of top management of a firm on which the success of these policies depends. Such commitment can only spring from an awareness that competitive companies cannot afford to lose out on women’s talent. An important trend to note and which is providing other avenues for entrepreneurial women is that more women than ever before are becoming employers and running their own businesses worldwide. In a nutshell, this article examined the components of women challenges in management positions in civil engineering in particular and unveiled the way to break out from such notions to the benefit of successful women. Equal opportunities and positive action cannot be confined to individual organizations or business initiatives. Only the active promotion of gender equality in all areas of education and employment by governments and civil society organizations and in particular, by employers’ organizations and trade unions can finally break the this norm in the construction field.