Girls on the scaffolding

Women on building sites: That’s old hat. under communism, even if female bricklayers did 200 pct of their daily workload, they would still be out-performed by their male colleagues. today, women in this sector are equally as good as men, but encounter greater problems

Emil Górecki

We are not accustomed to seeing women on construction sites, and yet they are already making inroads into the design, supervision and management side of this industry. They cope just as well as their male colleagues… but inevitably earn less. According to the Databank of Engineers, the average wage of a Polish male graduate engineer is more than PLN 4,600, while his female equivalent earns PLN 1,000 less but has to work harder in her post.

Rubber boots instead of stilettos

Eliza Wachowiec, a board member of developer Magnus Group, hasn’t noticed that women in the real estate industry are subject to discrimination. A large number of women are employed in her company, one of whom heads an overwhelmingly male engineering-technical section. Ms Wachowiec remarks that: “Whenever we advertise that we are looking for a project manager, for instance, 90 pct of all applications are from men – which is not to say companies are discriminating against women, but only that such fields of study are more often chosen by boys. Not all women want to run around a building site in rubber boots.”

However, the fact is that more women who have graduated from technological colleges are entering the industry and are coping very well. They are usually around 30, frequently very talented and graduated at a very young age. Eliza Wachowiec smiles: “The work atmosphere becomes more soothing, emotions calmed and the language used less… ‘drastic’ in their company.”

Jobs for the girls?

Architects seem to be in a privileged position in the property and construction industry. It could certainly be described as a highly technical occupation, where imagination and a sense of beauty are imperative – which is why it might be supposed that this would be field in which women would have
a lot of input. However, world-famous architect Zaha Hadid claims that even here the girls are up against it (see interview on p.58). According to Prof. Ewa Kuryłowicz, who lectures at the faculty of architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology and designs for the APA Kuryłowicz & Associates studio, about the same number of women as men finish architectural studies, but fewer members of the fairer sex decide to take up employment in this field. Prof. Kuryłowicz believes that: “Should a profession take up a lot of time, then less women will decide to go into it. They often have other priorities – for instance looking after a home, even with the best of partnership relations with her husband.”

She admits that her husband Prof. Stefan Kuryłowicz, president of APKA K&A. is better known than she is, although denies that this is down to discrimination. The company is his idea and his hobby. His work is taken up by stressful negotiations, meetings and responsibility for a client’s money. She, on the other hand, always prefers to design, and this is what she does. Prof. Kurylowicz adds that: “When I started work in the University of Technology, I found it difficult to compete with my colleagues. I had to work more to achieve the same effect as they did. Regrettably, the same problem still exists for women, especially at the beginning of a career.”

Marzanna Walo, who is a personnel consultant for the construction sector at Naj International, has also yet to encounter cases of sexual discrimination. But she has no contact with people starting out on their careers, when this can be most prevalent. She also admits that women sometimes have lower financial expectations than their male colleagues, despite performing the same work. Marzanna Walo explains why: “This might be a feature of female cultural identity: women expect money for what they have achieved and where they feel more certain of their value. Men, on the other hand, negotiate in terms of future achievement.”

Dead scared of mothers

Since women engineers can stand up to their male colleagues, then what are employers afraid of? Motherhood, of course. But when there are too few engineers on the market and the social attitude to ‘typically male’ professions undergoes a transformation, then the problem too is reduced, which is particularly true when an employment candidate already has some experience. Female colleagues of Prof. Kuryłowicz from the international Union of Women Architects complain about their situation in the USA. It is more difficult for them to make progress in a conservative community. Women architects from the Old World cope much better… as – surprisingly – do the Japanese. The latter are already making progress and beginning to record successes, despite the male-dominated society they live in.

Same job, smaller wages

The situation in Poland is similar, with the average annual salary pocketed by a male engineer being PLN 4,679, with women earning less – PLN 3,697. The difference is visible in every position and in every region of Poland. Those women who decide to become engineers choose such areas of study as architecture, building structures and environmental engineering, but only very rarely do they become managers or work in technical supervision posts.

Małgorzata Orłowska, senior recruitment consultant at the Databank of Engineers, is of the opinion that: “It may not be a general rule, but women do have fewer opportunities as engineers. They are weaker physically, which makes it more difficult for them to push their way into this employment market. Don’t get me wrong, but very often the heads of companies who require engineers are men well over fifty who are not used to having women as workers.”

 

So what does a boss do who wants to employ a specialist in his company and has two equally qualified and experienced people to choose from: a woman and a man? Arno Ruijtenbeek, president of Tebodin SAP-Projekt, jokes: “I would employ both. There is such a dearth of specialists in this industry that an opportunity like this should not be passed over. But knowing me, I would probably go for the girl. However, my experience with male and female workers is similar: cooperation between the sexes can work like a dream, but it can also be a disaster.”

 

Poland is not the worst in the world on this issue, but it still leaves much to be desired. When will women start earning as much as men? Very soon, I hope. Since, apart from anything else, they keep building site habits under control – and often they are just better, more talented and more efficiently organized than us males. ν