The experience of women in construction management: A hermeneutic phenomenological study

Leaders and change agents in the construction industry seek to enhance the image of the construction industry as an attempt to recruit and retain a high quality work force that can effectively respond to changing management delivery systems and changing owner profiles. Women who seek education and careers in construction management have limited opportunities to experience or sample their chosen vocation but have an opportunity to fulfill their own vocational interest while obtaining a salary that is substantially higher than salaries earned in traditional female occupations. This study opens up the question "What is the experience of being a woman in construction management?" In order to fully understand the answers that this question evokes, a research methodology that begins anew, without preexisting categories, that is hermeneutic phenomenology, guided by van Manen (1997), is used. Eight women share their experiential understanding for the data of this study from which five primary themes emerge: (a) opportunities, (b) communicating, (c) caring, (d) being on the site, and (e) working in a changing industry. Subthemes of the theme opportunities include opportunities denied, opportunities created, opportunities to learn, and opportunities enjoyed. The theme communicating includes communicating to be effective, derogatory communication, and the effect of stress on communication. The theme of caring is understood in terms of caring about making working conditions safe for others and self, caring about teamwork, caring about integrity, and caring about family. The theme being on the site includes an understanding of what the site means and how relating to other women at work is part of the experience of being a woman in construction management. The last theme, working in a changing industry, includes the two subthemes, working for women owners and having a college degree when many don't. Explored are the meanings that underlie the concrete experiences. Meaning is manifest in terms including appreciation, pride, satisfaction, knowledge, humiliation, voice, style, stress, caring, teamwork, integrity, family, and changes and are associated the lived world existentials, bodily, temporality, spatiality, and relationality. Implications for the wider field for construction management and teaching are provided.