Women now make up a larger proportion of the construction workforce than at any time since official records began.
The construction workforce was 18.8% female between April and June 2023, up 1.5% from the previous quarter, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Before the pandemic, this figure was 14.5%.
The higher relative level of women is partly explained by a slight decrease in the number of men working in the industry in recent years. Around 1.8 million men were employed in the construction industry in the last quarter, down 200,000 from the first three months of 2020.
While male employment fell during the pandemic and has yet to recover, the number of women employed in construction increased during the same period.
During the second quarter of 2023, around 340,000 women were registered working in the construction sector, an increase of 41,000 from the last three months before the Covid lockdown (January to March 2020).
When the ONS started collecting data on the gender breakdown of the construction sector in 1997, there were 242,000 female employees, representing 14.6% of the total workforce.
Chair of Women in Property, Chithra Marsh, said: “There could be a few factors at play here. We have an aging population and with it a group of older men who have retired from the industry, lowering the men’s statistics and increasing, in turn, the women’s division.
“At the other end of the career spectrum, we have women who are entering the industry after graduating. This year we had a number of construction apprentices as finalists in our national Women in Property students, and be a similar situation last year, which is good news for the future.
“There is also the possibility that retention of women could improve mid-career as the industry looks to improve flexibility and career portfolio.”
The ONS Annual Population Survey, which asks a sample of the population about their working life, presents a slightly different picture. Because the study measures nationwide data from a smaller sample size, it should be taken as a rougher picture of the industry’s gender divide.
Based on this data, the ONS calculates that in the year to March 2023 only 11,800 of 710,300 construction workers were women.
Data suggests that women in construction are more likely to take on project management roles.
Women made up 13% of construction project managers or similar professional work in the year to May 2022, although this figure fell to 12% in the same period this year, according to estimates by the Annual Population Survey.
So few women were registered as carpenters and joiners that the ONS could not reliably extrapolate how many there are, although there are an estimated 197,000 people in these roles in the UK.
No female stonemasons or earth workers were recorded in either year.
