Without gender balance in construction, progress in skills is a no-go

Ceri Moyers, Director of The Circle Partnership, says progress on the skills crisis is impossible as long as gender balance is not a priority.

Fewer than one in every five industry professionals is female. PwC’s 2025 Women in Work Index report (which measures factors such as the gender pay gap and employment levels) shows that women’s worsening unemployment and participation in the workforce has pulled the UK to a shameful 27th out of the OECD’s 33 most important economies.

This is at a time when British construction is attempting to juggle the simultaneous needs of rapidly increasing output while experiencing chronic labour supply issues. At last year’s UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum, representatives from across the built environment debated the most pressing issues facing the sector. Sentiment suggested that the skills crisis remains the industry’s biggest and most pressing obstacle to growth.

Yet, businesses continue to see gender diversity as a ‘specialist’ priority – and one that can be dumped in favour of more critical issues depending on international sentiment or other market pressures. We have to wake up to the role that gender diversity can play as a direct means of addressing the chronic skills shortage – and this has to start with businesses investing in retaining their existing female talent. Companies are spending on staff churn and on recruitment, money that could be better spent in keeping or progressing the women they already have.

So many highly skilled female professionals are either under employed or have left the sector. Current statistics show that 49% of women leave the built environment industry before the age of 34 – figures that are playing into these global gender equality rankings. This talent drain also means that the economy is missing out on the some £15bn to £22bn that BlackRock calculates would be realised through unleashing this section of the workforce’s full potential.

Failing to focus on initiatives to retain their existing diversity means that businesses are also actively hampering their future talent pipeline: 87% of gen Z consider the DEI of a workplace before applying to work there and 56% will not work for a business without a diverse leadership.

Our industry requires some 100,000 new roles per year for next five years to simply sustain growth. Ensuring we’re investing in keeping the diverse talent we already have must be seen as an urgent priority – not only to keep the wheels turning, but to ensure that businesses remain competitive and attractive to potential future talent.

If the construction sector is to meet these challenges, it must stop the industry from paying lip service to gender diversity and take proper steps to change the composition and culture of the sector.

For more info, visit thecirclepartnership.com

The Circle Partnership is a talent development organisation for the UK built environment, raising awareness of issues relating to gender balance, improving female talent retention and growing presence at a senior leadership level.

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