Building more flexible workplaces won’t just attract more women into construction, says researcher Natalie Galea. It will also help men to strip away the “straitjacket of masculinity” that is undermining the mental health and relationships of workers across the industry.
(L-R) Ian Rae, Managing Director – Pacific Region Project Management; Researcher Natalie Galea and NAWIC Awards host Jamie Durie.
Galea, who is currently “trudging” through the process of writing up her PhD through the University of New South Wales, has spent the last three years examining why gender diversity policies in the construction industry are failing, and the structural practices that maintain men’s advantage.
In 2016, Galea took home two prestigious prizes: NAWIC’s International Women’s Day scholarship and the CBRE University Scholarship at the NAWIC NSW Awards for Excellence.
Galea says both awards have helped her further her academic research and exposed her to an “incredible network of people” that are helping her shed light on some of the construction’s industry’s most challenging conundrums.
“Suicide in the construction workforce is almost double the national average,” she says.
When men in the industry “prioritise work over everything else, including family and health” the consequences are far reaching, and the costs acute.
Mental Health in the Construction Industry, a report prepared by the University of Melbourne on behalf of Mates in Construction in June, found that “suicide is elevated in construction workers compared to other workers in Australia”, at a rate 1.7 times higher than other male workers. The report attributed this to a range of factors, including employment conditions and job insecurity, lack of sleep and poor working relationships.
“The industry is starting to have conversations about mental health, but part of the problem is planning and resourcing. It’s important we start to explain that tight programs impact on people’s safety and their mental health,” she says.
In this environment, it’s hardly surprising that so many women leave the industry when they start a family, she says.
“Although many companies have generous parental leave policies, they continue to lose women at the parental leave point. One company I surveyed had lost 50 per cent of its female workforce after parental leave. If that happened to men, they’d send out a search party,” she says.
Galea says companies need to improve their return-to-work programs for women in construction. Her research has found women who return to the same construction project they worked on prior to parental leave generally do well, but those placed in the general resource pool are in what she calls the “lost lands”.
“Finding their way back into a suitable project is challenging, and they are often siphoned off into roles that put their career progression into a holding pattern.”
Part of the problem is the lack of part-time positions. “Construction roles are seen as ‘full time plus plus’. Anything less than this is resisted on construction sites,” she explains.
This isn’t exclusively the experience of women, though, and Galea’s research has found men who are primary carers are lost to companies at the same rate as women.
The solution? “It comes back to how we resource our projects, and how we plan at the initial stages,” she says.
Companies need to spend more time measuring turnover in gender terms and age brackets, she explains. “We need to work out when we are losing people. The organisations I’ve worked with have systems in place, but they lack the nuances to uncover valuable data around resourcing and why talent is walking out the door.”
Despite the challenges, Galea remains optimistic.
“One of the companies I researched is piloting different ways of working, including no weekend work. This may not sound innovative, but construction is starting from such a low base. Another is bringing project managers together to tackle the problem of flexibility as they set up a project.
“These are positive moves, because it gets down to the way we work. It’s not about fixing women, but about improving the conditions for everyone. And that will have a flow-on effect in attracting both men and women to the industry.”
With two decades in the construction industry under her belt, Galea is currently “dipping her toe in the water” with a consultancy practice, and has recently secured her first contract. So how does she think the support of NAWIC has helped her career?
“The financial benefits were obviously awesome, but the access to the NAWIC membership base has been an unexpected benefit,” she says.
What’s Galea’s advice to other women wanting to take their next step in their careers?
“Don’t think about it, just do it. And if you don’t get a scholarship the first year, like I didn’t, try again.”
.
The NAWIC NSW Awards for Excellence will be held in Sydney on Thursday 24 August 2017. Tickets are available online. Applications for the 2018 IWD Scholarship will open early 2018.
INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
The Sub-Zero and Wolf Kitchen Design Contest is officially open. And the long-running competition offers Australian architects, designers and builders the chance to gain global recognition for the most technically resolved, performance-led kitchen projects.
Gaggenau’s understated appliance fuses a carefully calibrated aesthetic of deliberate subtraction with an intuitive dynamism of culinary fluidity, unveiling a delightfully unrestricted spectrum of high-performing creativity.
BLANCOCULINA-S II Sensor promotes water efficiency and reduces waste, representing a leap forward in faucet technology.
In this candid interview, the culinary mastermind behind Singapore’s Nouri and Appetite talks about food as an act of human connection that transcends borders and accolades, the crucial role of technology in preserving its unifying power, and finding a kindred spirit in Gaggenau’s reverence for tradition and relentless pursuit of innovation.
The festivities of Saturday in Design may be just an echo now, but Sydney’s design showrooms are busier than ever and now’s the time to get out there and see all their latest products – many launched at SiD 09. Just download the 2009 handbook or view the online e-handbook here to find the locations […]
The second international World Championship for Architects in Skiing and Snowboarding (WAM open) will be held from 2nd -5th February 2012. The event will take place in the exciting destination of Ischgl in the Tyrol|Austria.
Innerspace Commercial Interiors celebrated their recent move with a relaunch party earlier this month. Guests had no trouble finding Innerspace’s new address with over 150 party-goers in attendance.
At a time when nearly everything is online – including lecture notes and research material that could previously only be found at the library – it’s more important than ever to create campuses at which students actually want to spend time. Such is the importance of this issue that a term has even been coined to define it: The Sticky Campus – a place where students choose to be rather than have to be.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
Throughout his life, Ong Tze Boon has made a real difference to both people and place. He is a man of vision who has changed the architectural landscape of Singapore and South-East Asia and strives to make a better world for the future.
Queers in Property (QIP) NSW hosted a Pride Month event, Home Truths: Sydney’s Housing Crisis and the LGBTQIA+ Community, on Thursday 5th June 2025.