Construction Research Congress 2020
Persistence of Women in the Construction Industry
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2020: Safety, Workforce, and Education
ABSTRACT
Women are under-represented in the construction industry and comprise only 9.9% of the total workforce. Further, prior research on women in construction is limited and heavily focused on recruitment and retention in academia. Therefore, research in workplace dynamics is needed to identify and address workforce recruitment and retention issues. Building from prior research conducted in engineering, this study aimed to identify personal and organizational factors associated with persistence within the field of construction. Persistence and personal factors were measured through the administration of a survey covering several areas: self-efficacy and outcome expectation, organizational support for work-life balance and training development, occupational commitment and satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Results suggest that women that persist in the field of construction do differ from non-persisters in their level of occupational commitment and perceived ability to navigate within their organization’s culture (organizational self-efficacy). Organizational self-efficacy and career resilience (occupational commitment) were shown to be significant predictors of persistence within the construction industry explaining 71.8% of the variance. These research findings will raise awareness and opportunities for companies to address recruitment and retention of women within the field of construction.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Construction Research Congress 2020: Safety, Workforce, and Education
Pages: 222 - 230
Editors: Mounir El Asmar, Ph.D., Arizona State University, David Grau, Ph.D., Arizona State University, and Pingbo Tang, Ph.D., Arizona State University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8287-2
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Nov 9, 2020
Published in print: Nov 9, 2020
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