King-Lewis, A (2020) Diversity and inclusion of women in the construction industry. PhD thesis, Oklahoma State University, USA.
Abstract
The construction industry has been growing for many years and is expected to continue expanding over the next decade. However, it has experienced a concurrent “widespread and significant shortage” in workers over the past two decades, specifically among project management and skilled positions. One of the most glaring disparities in the construction workforce is the industry’s failure to recruit and retain women. Construction has long been considered a “masculine” profession and is still classified as a non-traditional occupation for women by the U.S. Department of Labor, which is reflected in historical employment statistics. Although increasingly more women have found employment in the construction industry since the 1980s, this growth is not substantial and the proportion of women in the industry has not meaningfully changed. The consequences of a construction labor shortage at a national level are a significant risk to economic growth. Thus, further exploration of how to effectively enhance women’s inclusion in the construction industry is warranted. The primary objective of this dissertation research is to identify critical intervention points and opportunities for fostering the inclusion of women in the construction industry. This dissertation used three quantitative surveys as the primary data source and utilized a number of statistical techniques to achieve its objective. The first study describes the personal attributes of women in construction and organizational factors of their workplaces that encourage retention, or persistence, in the industry. The second study determines the extent to which different types of implicit gender bias occur within the construction workplace, while the third study examines gender bias within construction-related academic programs and its relationship to students’ self-concept. This dissertation contributes to the overall body of knowledge by providing the first quantitative evidence of women’s experiences of gender bias and persistence in the construction industry. The results of this dissertation can be used by academic programs and industry leaders to increase the number and proportion of women working in construction to meet current and projected workforce demands.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Veenstra, J N |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | women in construction; bias; economic growth; failure; gender; workforce; women; employment; organizational factors |
| Index terms: | diversity and inclusion, survey, occupation, evidence, bias, exploration, program, body of knowledge, retention, organizational factor, employment, women, construction labour, profession, project management, construction industry, economic growth, statistics, dissertation, disparity |
| Subjects: | evaluation and assessment methods, research dissemination and communication, institututions, environmental resource management, knowledge management, economic development, social justice, mathematical modelling, business, data collection methods, software systems, management, project management theory and practice, probability and distributions, sociology, industry analysis |
| Topics: | Sustainability, Project Management, Ethics, Roles and Professions, Information Management, Research Practice, Site Management, Organizational Design, Digital Applications, Human Resources |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here