Rita Peihua Zhang, Sarah Holdsworth, Michelle Turner, Mary Myla Andamon
{"title":"Career aspiration and workplace reality – Lived experience of early career professional women in construction","authors":"Rita Peihua Zhang, Sarah Holdsworth, Michelle Turner, Mary Myla Andamon","doi":"10.1016/j.wsif.2024.102926","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite the increasing number of women studying built environment and engineering courses, the participation of professional women in construction remains low in Australia. Interviews with early career professional women in construction showed a misalignment between career aspiration and career reality because of gender bias, discrimination and harassment, procedural bias, and a demanding work environment based on a male work model. Due to structural and cultural career constraints, many women had already given up thinking they could achieve their goals and were considering an alternative career path. Practical implications highlight that organisations can support the retention and success of early career professional women by fundamentally re-shaping workplace culture and work practices. This change is essential so that early career women are certain that a long-term career in construction is viable and that they will be able to combine work and family commitments if they choose to do so without a career penalty.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47940,"journal":{"name":"Womens Studies International Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Womens Studies International Forum","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539524000645","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"WOMENS STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Despite the increasing number of women studying built environment and engineering courses, the participation of professional women in construction remains low in Australia. Interviews with early career professional women in construction showed a misalignment between career aspiration and career reality because of gender bias, discrimination and harassment, procedural bias, and a demanding work environment based on a male work model. Due to structural and cultural career constraints, many women had already given up thinking they could achieve their goals and were considering an alternative career path. Practical implications highlight that organisations can support the retention and success of early career professional women by fundamentally re-shaping workplace culture and work practices. This change is essential so that early career women are certain that a long-term career in construction is viable and that they will be able to combine work and family commitments if they choose to do so without a career penalty.
期刊介绍:
Women"s Studies International Forum (formerly Women"s Studies International Quarterly, established in 1978) is a bimonthly journal to aid the distribution and exchange of feminist research in the multidisciplinary, international area of women"s studies and in feminist research in other disciplines. The policy of the journal is to establish a feminist forum for discussion and debate. The journal seeks to critique and reconceptualize existing knowledge, to examine and re-evaluate the manner in which knowledge is produced and distributed, and to assess the implications this has for women"s lives.