Sang, K and Powell, A (2012) Gender inequality in the construction industry: Lessons from pierre bourdieu. In: Smith, S D (ed.) Proceedings of 28th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2012, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
Despite a range of equality legislation and initiatives, the construction industry remains one of the most male dominated sectors. Women are under-represented in all construction occupations and professions. Much of the current literature describes the difficulties experienced by women who work in this sector including cultural and structural barriers, such as harassment and discrimination, limited networking opportunities and long and inflexible working hours which often result in poor career prospects and high levels of stress for women. This paper proposes that Bourdieu’s theoretical framework can be used to explain the continuing homogeneity of the construction industry professions. Bringing together qualitative interview findings from several research projects with construction industry students and professionals, this paper argues that Bourdieu’s thinking tools of symbolic violence and misrecognition can be used to understand women’s persistent inequality in the construction industry. The findings problematize existing policy recommendations that argue women have different skills that can be brought to the sector (such as co-operation). Such policies reinforce the gendered nature of the construction sector’s habitus and fail to recognize how the underlying structures and practices of the sector reproduce gendered working practices.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | bourdieu; equality; gender; construction; women |
| Index terms: | profession, working hours, inequality, career, women, construction sector, construction industry, discrimination, interview, legislation, networking, working practice, occupation |
| Subjects: | professional ethics, industry analysis, sociology, professional development, employment law, management, legal systems, communication, institututions, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Information Management, Organizational Design, Ethics, Legal Issues, Digital Applications |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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