Chrissi McCarthy's diversity blog: why women should have their own management training
Read with interest Ms McCathy’s article on diversity in the March (e) issue of CM the COIB official magazine and link to her bolg. The part of the article claimed Women are in some way encouraged to stick with safe roles on building sites employing in their careers. My experience over a lifetime in construction, property and on infrastructure projects is that this is not the case and represents an outdated view of the role of women, progress in society and in the engineering and related professions. I accept that the number of women in these fields is lower than the number of men but further I do not accept that women are an oddity, unexpected by males either in the professions or nowadays in the trades and that facilities don’t come with the needs and differences. Therefore I think an approach to train from this perspective is contra the cause of diversity and portrays a group in an out of date mode. Let’s have robust examples then from those holding themselves out as promoters of better practices in fairness and equality that are thoroughly thought out, honest and demonstrate understanding rather than a paradigm of old and simplistic outdated and unhelpful caricatures. The Women I meet on construction sites, in boardrooms, at conference or site meetings, new entrants or leaders don’t appear to have been spared the adventurous or difficult tasks in favour of intolerable coddle! They have been doing the job in a fundamentally similar way to other gender colleagues’ for a number of years. Where they make a difference is another debate and excellence depends on individual competences, attitude and exposure.
