Team Effort Needed for Construction-Site Gender Equity

Q: I have a female project manager with my general contracting firm. I have noticed in the past that a few employees from subcontracting companies give greater priority to instructions from my male project managers than they do to my female managers. What can I do when this situation arises in the future to prevent it? How should I fight it?

A. Fighting these types of gender stereotypical reactions to any employee in a nontraditional role takes a team effort.

There are several things about your question that lead me to believe that your total construction team could and should become engaged in the solution. That will not only serve to help your female project manager, but will make your entire company stronger and more prepared to deal with this situation.

It would be important for you and all your project managers to understand the need to clearly define your expectations of subcontractors at the time of entering into a contract. Communicate your way of doing business to each subcontractor at the time of bringing them onto the project team.

As the general contractor, let them know that you consider their attention to all of your project managers, male or female, to be extremely important to the successful completion of the project.

Make it clear also that you have zero tolerance for any deviation from this policy and will consider it when evaluating future potential work with your company.

Be sure that the priority of subcontractor response is discussed at your project manager meetings.

Where there are individual subcontractor patterns that emerge, be sure all members of your project management staff are aware of these incidents.

Develop a unified, company-wide strategy for dealing with them immediately and consistently. Make any offending subcontractors aware of the problems and the expected solutions of equal treatment for all your project managers.

Get Male PMs Involved

Your male project managers can be a key part of the solution of this problem by not allowing themselves to be used to enable subcontractors to continue this type of inequity.

Ensure that your male project managers drive subcontractors back to the female project managers with the understanding that she is perfectly qualified to provide a response and her answer is important and valid for the situation encountered. Where male project managers assist subcontractors in allowing their instructions to take precedence over female project managers, problems will persist.

Everyone on your team needs to utilize the same strategy, and your company and all your project managers will build a reputation for fair treatment.

Do you have questions on construction human resources or safety?
E-mail them to Leonard Toenjes at ltoenjes@agcstl.org or
craig_barner@mcgraw-hill.com.

(If Len picks your question,
he will answer it in a future issue of Midwest Construction.)