Exploring gender differences in construction research: A European perspective

Research suggests that women in academia face problematic career paths as a result of masculine cultures and horizontal segregation. At the same time, research in the construction sector has documented the barriers women face in entering and remaining in construction careers. Construction academia is investigating in this exploratory study to determine whether gender disparities found in academic research generally are valid in this field. As there is a lack of data on women in academia, particularly by sub-disciplines, scientific publication is used to explore gender differences and similarities. Publication is a significant area where gender disparities have been found in other fields and an area that can have substantial consequences for career progression in academia. The data are from a wider European study exploring women's participation in construction research and are based on secondary analysis of statistics from the ISI Web of Knowledge. Gender differences in publication are found to exist, suggesting that women are under-represented in construction research at a similar rate to women in engineering and technology academia. However, there are important differences between the different areas of construction research, which indicate that women may not face the same barriers and difficulties in all areas of construction academia. It also highlights the need for further research to investigate horizontal segregation and the gendered nature of publication, citation and collaboration in construction research.