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Quotas for women in infrastructure – good for all the wrong reasons?

A recent debate at the IABSE Future of Design conference in Manchester came out against quotas for women in infrastructure. Antony Oliver discusses the issue.

Antony Oliver, Infrastructure Intelligence editor

Quotas for women remain unpopular in construction, according to a straw poll at the recent Future of Design conference organised by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineers in Manchester.

While the show of hands in favour of using quotas as a means to bolster the consistently low numbers of women in the industry underlined passionate arguments from both the panel and the floor, the majority in the room definitely felt that appointment on merit had to be the norm for all.

"While we all want to see fair appointments made consistently on merit, the fact is that, as demonstrated by the current statistics, recruitment bias – unconscious or otherwise – is still heavily tilted towards white, straight men."

Yet this difficult issue is far from black and white. Even those staunchly against the use of quotas are usually able to understand and sympathise with the logic of arguments for them. And vice versa.

The panel, made up of Class of Your Own founder Alison Watson, Being Brunel blogger Tom Wallace and Arup engineer Lee Franck, reflected this lack of polarity.

Interestingly, the IABSE discussion came just a few days after former trade minister Lord Davies revealed that UK FTSE 100 companies are now well on their way to meeting his 2010 challenge for 25% of board directors to be women. 

His figures at the end of March put the FTSE 100 proportion at 23.5%, up impressively from just 12.5% in 2011.

"The voluntary approach is working - boards are getting fixed," he said announcing the update, underlining his belief that quotas are not necessary to stimulate change.

Lord Davies is not alone in his belief that there is little evidence that legislating quotas effects long lasting cultural change in what is essentially a “hearts and minds” issue.

"Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne highlighted the point in his recent George Bradshaw address. At his organisation’s current rate of change it will take 65 years to achieve a 30% female workforce"

As many people – men and women – pointed out during the IABSE debate, any switch away from appointing the best, most appropriate people for the job will inevitably impact business performance and undermine (actual of perceived) individual positions within organisations.

And I get that point. No one wants to be thought of – women or men – as having been appointed to a position or role for the “wrong” reason.

The problem is that, for all the success seen by FTSE 100 companies, perhaps largely through concerted efforts to recruit female exec and non-exec directors, such organic change across the rest of the workforce – particularly in male dominated infrastructure - is likely to take some time.

Network Rail chief executive highlighted this point in his recent George Bradshaw address. At his organisation’s current rate of change it will take 65 years to achieve a 30% female workforce, he said.

The point made by both Wallace and Franck on the Manchester panel was that they were just not prepared to wait that long – nor could the industry afford to wait and so be without access to 50% of the UK’s available talent.

The thing about quotas, like them or not, is that they do set targets and promote action in an area that, for all the successes highlighted by Lord Davies in the corporate board room, in infrastructure we do still struggle at the coal face.

Construction needs to get its diversity act together across the board. And while we all want to see fair appointments made consistently on merit, the fact is that, as demonstrated by the current statistics, recruitment bias – unconscious or otherwise – is still heavily tilted towards white, straight men.

The solution may or may not be quotas. But the process of change starts with industry accepting it has a problem to solve. Trouble is, I am not entirely convinced that we have necessarily cracked that one yet.

 

Antony Oliver is the editor of Infrastructure Intelligence. 

For details of the IABSE Future of Design conference click here

If you would like to contact Antony Oliver about this, or any other story, please email antony.oliver@infrastructure-intelligence.com.

Comments

Thanks Antony, very balanced article. There has been a flurry of articles recently in the trade press with everyone falling over themselves to pledge rash quotas. My feeling is that we should be careful what we wish for! I never want anyone to say "you only got where you are because you are a woman" and we must not set women up to fail either.
Its good to see events like this air the issues, since they are not straight forward or always obvious. Undeniably we must only promote on merit - but merit is in the eye of the beholder. You only have to join a discussion about football, just after the England manager has announced his team for the world cup, to know that views of merit can differ. And also, as in football, in picking a team, absolute merit is not the only factor - you want a diverse range of skills.