Internal and External Reasons Women Quit Architecture and Construction - Building Gender Balanced Business

• It happens in most every industry and has been documented throughout this site, but in architecture and engineering the problem is worse than average, writes Construction Week of the UAE.

• “Architecture has always been a male-dominated profession … Women have been studying architecture in school for years, but those numbers are not reflected in the workforce,” the magazine writes, citing, “[I]nflexible and unfriendly working hours, low pay, unpaid maternity leave and what seems to be an industry-wide lack of empathy towards family life”.

• In the Middle East, it adds, the problem is particularly acute, it adds, because of a lack of significant social or family support for working mothers. In addition, it says, “working hours in the architecture world are unfriendly … Women are rarely allowed to work part-time, which makes it impossible to coordinate their schedules with those of their children.”

• This then leads to a vicious circle, the magazine writes, in which circumstances push women out of the industry, and then many architecture firms “think twice before investing in workers who may leave in the face of family commitments or a sudden pregnancy.”

• Nothing new there, but is there a solution specific to the engineering and architecture fields?

• Besides urging more flexible schedules and more childcare, in centers and via schools, Construction Week notes that CAD technology has advanced to the point where (female) architects can work from home. But mainly it calls for “an overall change in attitude towards working; people’s social and mental lives need to be seen as equally important to their career development … It’s time the industry awoke from its giant slumber.”

The Construction Week article