IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v23y2009i3p512-530.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Leaders of men: women ‘managing’ in construction

Author

Listed:
  • Jacqueline H. Watts

    (The Open University, j.h.watts@open.ac.uk)

Abstract

Although women’s experience of working in management has been studied extensively, the particular challenges they face in this role within male-dominated professions merits further attention.This article draws on research into the career experiences of women civil engineers in the UK to critically discuss the possibilities for women to pursue a management pathway within construction. A feminist theoretical framework has been used to analyse data from 31 in-depth interviews with women working in both the consulting and contracting parts of the industry. The study highlights cultural issues of visibility and the presenteeism ethos of the sector as well as the material constraints of construction sites. Women are taking up senior management posts but only in very few numbers.Their success depends on assuming ‘male’ norms and in these roles they straddle a marginal territory that is bordered by exclusion and resistance.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacqueline H. Watts, 2009. "Leaders of men: women ‘managing’ in construction," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 23(3), pages 512-530, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:23:y:2009:i:3:p:512-530
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017009337074
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017009337074
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017009337074?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elisabeth Michielsens & Linda Clarke & Christine Wall, 2001. "Diverse Equality in Europe: The Construction Sector," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Mike Noon & Emmanuel Ogbonna (ed.), Equality, Diversity and Disadvantage in Employment, chapter 8, pages 118-135, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Sandra Fielden & Marilyn Davidson & Andrew Gale & Caroline Davey, 2000. "Women in construction: the untapped resource," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 113-121.
    3. Simon Peel & Peter Boxall, 2005. "When is Contracting Preferable to Employment? An Exploration of Management and Worker Perspectives," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(8), pages 1675-1697, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jenny Rodriguez & Evangelina Holvino & Joyce K. Fletcher & Stella M. Nkomo & Tessa Wright, 2016. "Women's Experience of Workplace Interactions in Male-Dominated Work: The Intersections of Gender, Sexuality and Occupational Group," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 348-362, May.
    2. Jarle Trondal & Zuzana Murdoch & Benny Geys, 2015. "Representative Bureaucracy and the Role of Expertise in Politics," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(1), pages 26-36.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kim Hoque & Ian Kirkpatrick & Alex De Ruyter & Chris Lonsdale, 2008. "New Contractual Relationships in the Agency Worker Market: The Case of the UK's National Health Service," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 46(3), pages 389-412, September.
    2. Donna Bridges & Larissa Bamberry & Elizabeth Wulff & Branka Krivokapic‐Skoko, 2022. "“A trade of one's own”: The role of social and cultural capital in the success of women in male‐dominated occupations," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 371-387, March.
    3. Sharon Bolton & Maeve Houlihan & Knut Laaser, 2012. "Contingent Work and Its Contradictions: Towards a Moral Economy Framework," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 121-132, November.
    4. Asa Romeo Asa & Navneel Shalendra Prasad, 2014. "Analysis on the Factors that Determine Sustainable Growth of Small Firms in Namibia," International Journal of Management Science and Business Administration, Inovatus Services Ltd., vol. 1(1), pages 5-11, December.
    5. Donna Bridges & Elizabeth Wulff & Larissa Bamberry, 2023. "Resilience for gender inclusion: Developing a model for women in male‐dominated occupations," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 263-279, January.
    6. Yuvaraj Dhanasekar & Kaliyaperumal Sugirthamani Anandh & Mariusz Szóstak, 2023. "Development of the Diversity Concept for the Construction Sector: A Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(21), pages 1-19, October.
    7. Elisa Peñalvo-López & Francisco-Javier Cárcel-Carrasco, 2019. "An Analysis about Learning to IncreaseWomen’s Participation and Employment in Europe’s Energy Transition: Evidence from the European Project MEnS," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-17, August.
    8. Samuel Heimann & Kristina Johansson, 2024. "Gendered work in geoscience: Hard work in a masculine field," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 16-35, January.
    9. SAKA Najimu & MOYANGA Dorcas Titilayo & ADEGBEMBO Taiwo Fadeke, 2022. "Factors Limiting the Participation of Women Construction Professionals (WCPs) in the Nigerian Construction Sector (NCS)," Noble International Journal of Scientific Research, Noble Academic Publsiher, vol. 6(1), pages 1-9, March.
    10. Liyaning (Maggie) Tang & Shaleeza Sohail & Emma Shorthouse & Larissa Sullivan & Matthew Williams, 2022. "Put Gender on the Tender in Australian Public Projects," World, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-11, September.
    11. Navneel Shalendra Prasad & Asa Romeo Asa & Xu Hongyi, 2015. "Attitude and Behavioral Intention towards Reducing Carbon Footprints in the Environment: an Empirical Study of Fiji," International Journal of Management Science and Business Administration, Inovatus Services Ltd., vol. 1(5), pages 21-30, April.
    12. Coyle-Shapiro, Jacqueline & Morrow, Paula & Kessler, Ian, 2006. "Serving two organizations : exploring the employment relationship of contracted employees," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2665, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:23:y:2009:i:3:p:512-530. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.