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CLR Report

CLR Study 2 - Women in Construction

01/01/2004
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Authors: Linda Clarke, Elsebet Frydendal Pedersen, Elisabeth Michielsens, Barbara Susman, Christine Wall

Why are women so rarely seen on construction sites in the developed world, though visible as building labourers in parts of Asia? This book explores the reasons why the construction industry has remained overwhelmingly male dominated both in image and number. Any presence of women in the industry has been sparsely documented – especially women working in the manual trades as carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters, plasterers, scaffolders and bricklayers, etc. 

The book sets out to rectify this omission and reveals how women – though in a minority – have been working in the industry, now and in the past, throughout the world, from the Indian subcontinent and Africa to the United States and, above all, in Europe. It brings together original research by an international group of writers and academics and personal accounts by women in the industry, illustrated with contemporary and historical photographs.