“Women and “Ideal” Women”: The Representation of Women in the Construction Industry

Abstract

Increased female participation has been highlighted as necessary to fill a labor shortage in the construction industry, but also to promote equality and efficiency. Despite initiatives to recruit women, the industry remains one of the most gender-segregated industries in the world. Increased knowledge about gender has been identified as needed to change the status quo. The aim of this study is to contribute with new insights into gender in construction by exploring how women in the industry are discursively represented, and how they talk about their workplace. It is based on analyses of texts from the web. The search engine WebCorpLive was used to retrieve and sort the material to enable linguistic analysis. The study shows that although the overarching message in the material is that there are many opportunities for women in the industry, closer analysis of it shows that women entering the industry are met with gender-biased attitudes, discrimination and unrealistic demands.