Women owner-managers of small construction firms: A complementary perspective

Studies on women in construction tend to focus on women in professional roles and building trades. Current literature has a bias towards the assumption that barriers affecting women hinder the efforts to address the gender imbalance in the industry. These barriers have been linked to the vertical and horizontal segregation that the industry exhibits. Although there is a growing number of small construction firms that are owned-managed by women, there is a scarcity of research on the experience of these owner-managers. Thus, exploring women's experience in senior management positions within their organisations offers a complementary perspective to the ongoing discussion of the gender balance in construction. This paper aims to examine how the experience of women in construction has been reviewed to date and to present the need to gain a more situated understanding of the experience of women owner-managers, especially those within small construction firms, which comprise 98% of UK construction businesses. This paper will contribute to a contextualised understanding of why the study of women's individual experience in small construction firms continues to be relevant in construction gender research.