In this article, PBC Today interviewed 2017 Apprentice finalist and Women in Construction ambassador Michaela Wain, who sheds light on her experiences working in the industry, how women can join the sector, and the future of equality and diversity in construction
Apprentice finalist Michaela Wain has several companies within the construction industry, such as Design and Build UK – winner of the Women in Construction awards. Michaela is an ambassador for Women in Construction and works closely with BiGDUG, having just done a recent podcast for Women in Equality and Trade.
Here she tells us all about how she got started in the construction industry.
Was construction a career path that you’d always seen yourself going into, or is it something that you fell into naturally?
It was 20 years ago, and I think most women who entered the industry around that time, and still now really – it’s by accident. I was attending university doing a Religion and Special Needs course, so there’s zero crossover there. I left and took a year out, and I went live with my dad. In the end, he told me to get a job, and I was like, what is this?
I had a choice. I went and handed in my CV everywhere, but I couldn’t find work. I applied to Greggs when I was 19 but the thought of wearing a blue hair net in the middle of the shopping centre where I had to go out and try and find a boyfriend wasn’t ideal!
The other option was to work at a construction magazine selling advertising. I literally fell into that when I was taking a year out from University, and I realised I wanted to be a teacher, but I never ended up teaching.
So that I guess was my first taste of the construction industry. My mum is an estate agent, my dad’s an engineer, my stepdad’s a builder, and all my brothers are joiners, so I had close links in the industry anyway. I was treated like one of the boys equally. It wasn’t daunting for me to be in this industry – I have four brothers, but I wasn’t intimidated by being surrounded by men, and I was well in my comfort zone.
Unfortunately, I hit a glass ceiling in my career path. I 100% should have been promoted to a sales manager as I had helped to ten X the business I was working at. However, they told me they were looking for an older man for the role.
That was, I guess, my first experience of discrimination. I never really felt like I was being discriminated against at the time; I felt like they were just being difficult. After that, I thought right, okay, this is not for me. I’m pretty unemployable because I’m a bit of a liability. I like to do my own thing. So, I decided about my own business, and then the rest unfolded from there.
You mentioned how you have experienced discrimination because you’re a woman. How have you learned to overcome pushback in an industry that’s so male-dominated?
You know what? I think it’s harder when you’re younger, and you don’t have the experience behind you. At the time, I didn’t realise it was discrimination; I’ve never been one to make myself a victim, even in situations where perhaps you are. I’ve always thought, there is a problem and there is a solution. I don’t think I really realised this until I started reflecting on it.
I’ve just dealt with every incident as I find them. Sometimes I don’t feel like these employees at the time, for 1 minute thought that they were discriminatory. I feel like in their mind, they just thought, this is what a sales manager looks like, and they don’t know any better. It’s ingrained in society, which is why it’s important for us to have female role models so that we can see, this woman was an excellent salesperson as well.
There are no kind of key tricks or tactics that I can advise on what I do. I just deal with every instance separately and try and see things from a bird’s eye view.
All of us, whether we’re male or female, tend to have an ego and we tend to be defensive. What I will always do before I act in any situation is to try and take a bird’s eye view and think, right, okay, is this wrong?
How am I going to react to this situation? Is this just a misunderstanding? I think sometimes if we can take a breath, take a minute, take a day if we need, and then react to it, you get a far better positive outcome.
You mentioned briefly before about Women in Construction, which you’re an ambassador for. How is this organization helping to promote equality in the construction industry?
Design and Build UK is a construction magazine, online and in hard copy.
For the last three years, we’ve been profiling women. We have little competitions, where you can enter women into a competition and the best profile would get a double page spread, and the next two would get a full page free of charge, where we can talk about their career path and promote them. We’ve developed it from that point into an award, which has been both online and in person.
We also just started a session every week and women were coming in from different areas of construction, telling us the stories. Some horrendous stories, like sexual assault in the workplace. There are also some amazing inspirational stories.
It’s never really been talked about, and we need to provide a platform for these women. From there it led us to the awards where we had men in attendance. We had all kinds of companies attending from smaller to bigger companies.
We ended up selling all the partnerships in 6 hours, and I remember getting emotional and crying a little bit because it felt like I’d been talking about women in construction for ten years and had never seen evidence of anybody making real things happen.
Sure, initiatives would pop up here and there, and people saying they want women in construction but not actually doing anything. With this, it felt like people were backing this up, and wanted to do something. So, yeah, we’re trying to create platforms where we create role models, which is important for people to be able to see successful women and the upcoming women as well and what we’re able to achieve in this industry.
How have you used your new platform to raise more awareness about women working in the construction industry?
The Apprentice was amazing because I was relatively successful before I went on the show. And because of that, people immediately respected what I was doing in that room. It showed that I was already capable and showed my credentials, so it just opened a lot of doors for me, and it allowed me to be able to go and have conversations with tier one and tier two contractors to speak, and members of parliament to try and push through initiatives and ideas to develop roadmaps and guidance for these companies.
When I came off the show, and other people started messaging me, I had a lot of messages of congratulations, and I also had people telling me about their experiences as women working in the industry. There were some tragic things that have taken place, which is literally unbelievable. You wouldn’t believe it.
You would think this has got to be a lie because it was 2017; how on earth is this happening in 2017?
So, I had a choice. I could use social media to talk about these stories and say this is what’s happening, do something. Or I could just go on Big Brother. However, I wanted to use the platform professionally and try and shed light on what is happening.
How can the construction industry become a more attractive industry for women to work in?
Women and men are different; however just because there is a difference doesn’t mean that we are incapable. As a statistic, two years ago only 25% of construction sites had female toilets on them, which is just shocking.
I’m not sure of the stats on this but I’m going to say the vast majority are using storage covers because they say women don’t frequently visit sites. The point is, if a woman does visit the site, she’s going to feel unwelcome like she shouldn’t be there because their needs are just not being met.
I think it’s also important to have a mentoring program or access to a mentoring program outside of their company which involves the women in a networking community where they can speak to other women for an hour a week. It’s just small things that matter.
There’s a lot more that can be improved too that would benefit men and women as well, such as working hours, especially if you’re a parent. Working hours in construction are very unsociable – you can’t get a childminder from 6:30 in the morning. We have kids, and we have lives outside of the construction industry.
In construction, we have the worst mental health and suicide rate across all industries, and I honestly believe it’s because of the working culture. It’s a very harsh environment where not everybody finds everything funny, where everything must be stiff or calculated.
I believe including women in these environments naturally just softens it. When I walk onto a construction site, everything does calm down a little bit. And I think women in these environments will help the men, and women will help increase productivity. It’s been proven across every single board, in every single industry. So why is the industry not jumping on the back of that?
What would you say then to women that are wanting to pursue a career in construction? Where can they start out? What options are available to them?
There are several options. The money is great, and it’s something we don’t often really talk about. If you have a choice of being a nail technician or being a plumber, be a plumber. You are going to get paid five times more for what you are in a typically female role, in a typical female industry.
There are all kinds of ways that you can start out, such as local colleges and local universities. City & Guilds have a good ‘Step Into Construction’ course. From there, you can go and do further training with City & Guild and join women’s networking groups.
I run a room via an app called Clubhouse every week which is sponsored by BiGDUG. It’s 7:30 every Wednesday, free of charge. Come in, meet women and men in the industry, and learn about construction, the problems, and the benefits.
Where do you see the industry going in the next ten years?
From an equality perspective, change is happening.
Last year we had 13% of women in construction; this year it’s 15%. I’m hoping that it’s only going to increase and next year we’re going to get to 20%. My dream is to get to 26% of women in construction by 2026.
There is an understanding that we have a skills gap shortage, and we need to start tapping into different pools of candidates. I do believe in ten years there’s going to be far more equality construction.
Inflation is an absolute killer at the moment with regard to investment, and we’ve got a struggle on our hands. But long term, within ten years it’s only going to grow with construction. People are always going to need houses; we’re always going to need infrastructure. It is a safe and secure industry to be in, so I am constantly promoting it as a great industry to work in.
Michaela can be heard discussing Equality in Trade in her new BiGDUG podcast at https://youtu.be/UZz443ohOF0.
