Gender Differences in Construction Management Students’ Sense of Belonging

Despite significant efforts being made to recruit and retain women, construction is still a male-dominated industry. Though there have been numerous studies on understanding the barriers and retention strategies of females in the industry and academic programs, very few of those analyzed the issue using a sense of belonging framework. The present paper adds to previous studies with the objective to evaluate gender differences in sense of belonging of undergraduate construction management students, as well as common gender stereotypes of women in construction using a survey approach. This research is a pilot inquiry taking place at the authors' institution. Our findings show that female students' sense of belonging is significantly lower than that of male students'. Additionally, our results indicate that both male and female students perceive that there is gender discrimination in the construction industry, though females perceive it at a higher agreement level. Female students also indicate they perceive that recruiters prefer to hire males for jobsite positions, though both female and male students indicated they think women are just as capable in construction and the jobsite. Our findings concur with previous studies on gender differences in construction, yet they provide an interesting benchmark to the sense of belonging of construction students and an updated view of what students' think about women in construction. Results from this pilot study can be used to help academic institutions and industry to create policies to attract and retain more women in construction domains, and provide construction instructors with recent findings to discuss the role of women in construction nowadays.