This year’s World FM Day theme – ‘Cultivating Belonging Through Built Environments’ – celebrated in May earlier this year provided an ideal opportunity to highlight the important role of facilities management in driving gender equity in the construction industry, and ensuring it is fit for both current workers and future generations.
Women play a critical role in the management of our built environment. We know that fair, inclusive and respectful
workplaces work for everyone.
Equitable facilities
Facilities management can play a key role in supporting gender equity through:
• improving physical infrastructure by upgrading site facilities to meet the needs of a diverse workforce – this includes
providing separate, secure and clean bathrooms and changing rooms for women
• supporting safety and culture by implementing policies that address gender-based violence, sexual harassment and
discrimination
• ensuring personal protective equipment (PPE) is properly sized and designed for women
• creating environments that support a better work/life balance, and
• pushing for systemic change to drive inclusivity.
Nationally, women make up only 12.4 percent of the sector (down from 17 percent in 2006) and only 3.4 percent of the trades.
The reality is that we won’t see more women attracted to, staying in or advancing in the sector unless there is a cultural reset to create safe and inclusive workplaces, and make the construction industry an employer of choice for all.
Across the board, people stay in positive workplace environments that meet their needs. Research by the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) shows that, even in ‘supportive’ workplaces, there are still widespread issues experienced by women. This includes inadequate health and safety policies, lack of basic amenities such as women’s toilet facilities and lactation rooms, and the fact that women are still fighting to access basic amenities to enable them to do their jobs.
Workplace microaggressions – those small acts that make women feel less welcome, less valued or less safe – can lead some
women to reassess their future in the industry or their chosen role, and often leads to exits from the sector entirely. This kind of attrition outlined in our ‘The not-so-little things affecting women in construction’ report is unsustainable in an industry experiencing a massive skills and labour shortage.
Many participants reflected on the poor or complete lack of access to suitable facilities and the way this made them feel as if they didn’t belong in the sector at all: “I have been told there were no toilets for women on-site and the ones on-site were so filthy that you could not use them. I had to plan every visit to know where the nearest McDonald’s was to go to the toilets.”
It’s also well past time to recognise menstrual products as necessities, not privileges. NAWIC is proud to support Share the Dignity’s ‘Building Bloody Change’ campaign for menstrual equity advocating for the provision of sanitary bins and free period products in the workplace. Dignity should not come with a price tag.
Inadequate or inaccessible facilities are one of the everyday signals that women are an afterthought in workplaces. Ensuring
free access to period products is an essential step toward workplaces built on fairness, inclusion and respect, where
everyone can thrive.
Balancing the scales
The United Nations theme for International Women’s Day (IWD) this year was Balance the Scales.
When speaking at events in Adelaide and Canberra, I focused on what those scales actually weigh for the industry and community – that is, what it costs us all when they don’t balance.
First, there are the scales of construction and what we put on them. On the one side, we have the infrastructure program – $242 billion pipeline, the highest-ever level recorded. Hospitals, schools, roads, rail, housing and the energy transition will power the next generation. On the other side – the workforce to deliver it.
Right now, those scales are far from balanced. We have a skills shortage that is already causing delays and cost blowouts on
projects across the country. Our workforce gap is projected to hit 300,000 people by 2027 and we do not have enough people to build what we have committed to.
With the numbers of women in the sector so low, a significant portion of the potential solution is sitting underutilised.
Second, there’s the human cost. This is not just a numbers issue.
Behind every percentage point is a person:
• There is the apprentice who left after her second year because the site culture made her feel unsafe every day, grinding her
down slowly. She questioned whether she belonged and ultimately decided she didn’t and left altogether.
• There is the project manager who came back from parental leave to find her role had been quietly restructured and
was told that the industry “moves fast” and perhaps a less demanding role would suit her now.
• There is the engineer who was brilliant and ambitious, but had to fight for the right to be taken seriously. Talked over in
meetings, left off email chains, asked to take notes when she was the most qualified person in the room. She eventually took
her skills to another country.
Every one of those women is a loss. A loss of opportunity to shape their own future, to the projects that didn’t get built better, to the teams that didn’t get led differently, to the industry that didn’t get to see what it was capable of.
So, the scales don’t just weigh fairness. They weigh what we lose when we get this wrong.
Third, the turning point. Where we are now. The scales don’t balance on their own. They are balanced deliberately – by people who decide that the imbalance is no longer acceptable. By organisations that stop treating equity as a cultural
aspiration and start treating it as an operational requirement.
The evidence shows when we reach that turning point, the shift starts to happen. The work gets better. The teams get
stronger. The projects get delivered. Businesses are significantly more successful.
Diversity helps make better decisions 87 percent of the time, and makes them twice as fast. Gender diverse companies
outperform their peers with up to two percent higher annual returns and, the more women you have in leadership, the higher likelihood of outperforming other companies. Because that is what happens when you stop leaving talent off the table.
I have seen this in action; those willing to step up to build the balance are seeing the results through:
• transforming their sites by building fair, inclusive and respectful cultures, and now impacting their whole supply
chain
• providing equitable facilities, properly fitting PPE, ensuring safety at work, standing up to microaggressions and actively
working to reduce their gender pay gap
• having leaders, allies and ambassadors who commit to shifting the balance every day, in myriad small but impactful ways, and
• the actions of those people who’ve decided that the old way of doing things is costing us too much, and who want to be part of the solution.
I think about that apprentice, that project manager, that engineer. What has been lost because they entered workplaces
that weren’t designed for them.
Then I think about all the ways we can get this right. The women who have succeeded, demonstrating grit and determination and extraordinary talent. The support for businesses and their leaders to be part of the solution. The evidence that shows us what is possible.
Cathryn Greville is the chief executive officer of The National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC).
This article first appeared in the May 2026 edition of FM magazine. To download the entire edition for free, click here.
Read more: The FM workforce of the future
