Baxi roundtable explores improved opportunities for women in construction

Baxi is a founding member of the Construction Inclusion Coalition (CIC), which launched in September 2023 with an objective to drive action to correct gender imbalance and address other EDI considerations in the construction sector.

One month on, Baxi’s roundtable continued on that theme, focusing on gender imbalance and asking:

How can the sector and supply chain improve its attractiveness to women, and what can be done to improve retention rates and reduce women leavers?

As one participant said early on: “How do you tackle the problem all the way through, from the cradle to the grave – what are the things we need to do?”

Like many sectors across STEM and engineering disciplines, construction has a skills gap and the sector’s growth and ambition in the future - and the value it delivers to our society - is at risk if it can’t attract the necessary talent. Recent CIC research has found that only 15% of construction sector workers are women, and just 6% are from ethnic minority backgrounds. Yet a CIC poll of over 2000 UK adults in July 2023 found that 46% of people said they would be more likely to look for roles in construction if the sector demonstrated a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Without becoming more attractive to the full breadth of diversity in the workforce, construction is significantly limiting its access to the talent pool. The main topics and areas of discussion covered during the roundtable are summarized in the report below.