Woman's Hour - Women in Construction

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

A £10 million campaign to diversify the building industry was launched this month by the CITB (Construction Industry Training Board), backed by the Department for Education. Currently women make up 16% of the total UK construction workforce of two million people. How can the industry attract more girls to the trades and the wider world of construction, and what can be done to keep them there long-term? What’s the reality of working in such a male-dominated environment? And how might things change in the future? Tina Daheley speaks to Roma Agrawal, a structural engineer who worked on the Shard, Katie Kelleher, a former crane operator who now works as an Appointed Person at Select Plant Hire, Hattie Hasan, founder of Stopcocks Women Plumbers, Cristina Lanz Azcarate, Chair, London South East NAWIC (National Association of Women in Construction), Sarah Fenton, Partnerships Director Midlands and North, CITB, (Construction Industry Training Board) and Lynsey Davies, a plasterer who is now training to be a quantity surveyor.Presenter: Tina Daheley

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Construction is an industry dominated by men. Women currently make up just 16% of the total UK workforce of 2 million people. A few weeks ago, a £10 million CITB fund, that's the Construction Industry Training Board, was launched to try to diversify the sector. Well today we're going to look into what more can be done to attract girls to construction jobs as well as what could be done to keep them there for the long term.

What's it like to work in such a male-dominated environment and what would the future look like if things were more even? To discuss I'm joined in the studio by an architect, engineer, plasterer, crane operator, plumber and representative from the construction training board but I will let you all introduce yourselves properly. Good morning my name is Hattie Hassan, I run Stopcox Women Plumbers and we make water work. Hi my name is Cristina Lanzas-Carate and I'm an architect and I can describe my job as close to being a midwife of not children but delivering ideas for my clients. My name is Sarah Fenton I'm a partnerships director at the Construction Industry Training Board or CITB and our role is about

attracting and supporting the development of people to construct a better Britain. My name is Roma Agrawal. I'm a structural engineer at ACOM and also an author and podcaster and my job is to make sure that our structures stand up. Hi I'm Kate Kelleher and I'm a crane operator and appointed person working for Select Plantire. Our job is to do all the heavy lifting on site. Hi I'm Kate Kelleher and I'm a crane operator and appointed person working for Select Plant Hire. Our job is to do all the heavy lifting on site. Hi, I'm Lindsay Davis, former plasterer, currently training to be a quantity surveyor with Swansea Council. I'm responsible for all the costs involved in the construction project. Welcome to the programme. Now I'm afraid when I think of construction I think of

wolf-whistling men in hard hats but crude stereotypes and Bob the Builder aside exactly what is the construction industry? How big is it? What's it worth? Sarah? The construction industry it is massive it's two million strong workforce 320,000 women work currently in the construction industry how we get around so transportation rail road etc the construction industry is actually all around us but people usually only see it when we're actually in progress of doing it but without the construction industry we'd all be sat in a field with nothing because where do you get your water, where do you get your power, everything else. So construction is a huge, huge contributor, not just to the economy, but to how we live. Well, in that case, thank goodness for construction.

Otherwise, we'd all be sitting in a field. How much is the industry worth? According to the World Economic Forum, it is 110 billion per year. This is the equivalent of 7% GDP and is one fourth of it public and three fourths private. So we're talking about a lot of money here. It's a significant part of the economy. We know that there are 58,000 more women in construction than there were in 2010. Where exactly are these women working what types of roles are they doing of the women that work in the industry 93 percent work in architecture or design surveying um only um seven percent work in the what we call manual trades so

like bricklaying plumbing painting, painting and decorating, plastering, the crane operators is another example. Those real on-site roles are very much underrepresented. 14% of UK engineering and technology students are female, just 7% are engineers, making the UK one of the least equal countries in Europe, if we're talking about this measure. Why is that? And what can be done, Roma? Yeah, I mean, it's a strange thing, isn't it? Because so I grew up in America, in India, and I've spent the last 20 years in the UK now. And I find there's a big cultural difference. So having grown up in India, we have this huge emphasis on science, technology, and everyone

wants their kids to be engineers. The fact that I'm an engineer is really uninteresting to most of my parents and their friends and people like that. It was only when I came to the UK, I thought, oh, it's really odd that in the UK, for some reason, women are kind of discouraged from studying science. Interesting that you say that because my parents are Indian. And again, my first degree was in computer science, which they fully encouraged. No, exactly. I think for me, one of the big reasons is just that awareness. So as Sarah was saying earlier, you know, engineering construction, you know, our lives just wouldn't

exist in the way they do today without it. But it's telling people that. So it's how do we actually get out there and communicate what engineering really is about to encourage people from all different backgrounds, because it's not only the gender imbalance that we have, we have all other types of imbalances as well. So how do we actually get there in an accessible way to explain to people that, you know, engineering, construction, it's fun, it's creative, it's exciting, it's rewarding. I mean, you earn good money. That's that's good enough reason for a lot of people. So there's lots of amazing reasons why you would want to work in our industry. We mentioned that £10 million has been invested in construction by the CITB specifically to diversify the industry.

Where will that money go? It's to support really grassroots projects. So in Wales, it's supporting a project where it's helping career changers, for example, and giving them a year's contract to be able to work, get the qualification that they need, but also about providing women mentors and also supporting mentees. So actually they've got someone there as they do that move across

into our industry to support them. Christina, you're on the diversity panel for RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects. Young women train as architects. into our industry to support them. Christina, you're on the diversity panel for RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects. Young women train as architects. You can probably tell me the figures, but they don't seem to stay. How many people study architecture, women, and how many go on to become architects?

Percentage-wise, roughly 44% of people studying architecture are women. However, architecture has serious targets. So you have to do first a degree, three years, we call it part one, then you have to have a year out, then you go back to do a second degree, part two, then you have to take two years at least professional practice, and then you go back to university to do your final professional training, which means that in between those changes, a lot of people drop out. With regard to women, we notice that very often when you become part two, you are caught in the job, you are doing a really good job and you don't see the need to fully qualify. Or even if you

decide to have a family, there is no flexibility to let you come back to the industry. You are expected to work very long hours and to kind of put your personal life behind. And there are not many opportunities for part-time work, remote work, etc. So one thing that is quite interesting is that a lot of women are exploring alternatives, either setting up by themselves or even going to sites and working as design coordinators on site or architects on site which is more structure because on site you have to close at a certain time because of the planning regulations. So 44% of women study it how many go on to become at the end of that what sounds like a very long process how many go on to probably around 20-22%. Wow so half that number. Yeah.

Roma you say that when you walk into a room for a meeting, you're often the only woman there. You've kept tally. So we were reading 11 men in one, 17 men and you. And in one meeting, it was 21 men and you. And you also get letters addressed to you as mister. And I think the last time I was mistaken for the secretary was at least within the last year.

So that happens as well. Yeah, there's a big cultural shift that needs to happen because, you know, as Christina was saying, a lot of women may start to study various degrees and courses. But then kind of keeping yourself through that whole process is hard. It's tricky. And we often do face different challenges as women in the workplace. So, you know, me personally, I've left a seven week old little girl at home today. is hard. It's tricky. And we often do face different challenges as women in the workplace. So, you know, me personally, I've left a seven week old little girl at home today. It took me three years to have her. I've had three rounds of IVF treatment. And I have to say, you know, if my employer had been anything, you know, they were so incredibly supportive. And, you know,

the amount of emotional and physical toll that fertility treatment, for example, takes on a woman is huge. And if you don't have a supportive employer, then, you know, that's that's a reason why a lot of women might have to drop out. So the culture of the companies makes a huge difference in in staying in the industry. And my view of the situation is that there are a lot of companies that are doing really amazing good things. We have an intake of 43% female this year because we are out there promoting the kind of work we do in the right way. And I would really encourage people from any diverse background to do their research and work for the companies that get it, that are working hard to change their culture.

And things will change, but it is slow and it's taking a long time. We've talked about the industry being dominated by men, but there's a problem with all different types of diversity because there aren't that many ethnic minorities in construction. I think the figure is 7% at the moment. Right. So again, just as a lot of women drop out of courses and don't actually go into the industry, people from ethnic minority backgrounds disproportionately also do not go into the industry. I mean, you can talk about role models there. Again, it's about people hiring in their own image. Yeah, hiring in their own image. You know, when I go into companies, when I'm interviewing, who do I actually see in the common areas? What does

the culture feel like? It makes a big difference to where I would choose to work. The industry has been very dominated by a certain type of person for a long time and the trick is now that those of us who are different, we need to kind of get out there, get our voices heard and make sure that we're getting different people interested and involved. And you're doing that right now. Certainly we're changing things now we're building that role model bank and on goconstruct.org we've got a number of case studies and role models and actually by increasing that visibility of the women that work in the industry that are so inspirational and the work that they do. Actually, we've seen a change and a shift in that over 52%, nearly 1 million women accessed the site last year alone

who were interested in looking at what does construction have to offer? I think the challenge is now, how do we convert that interest into actual real work? Well, we have some of those role models here who we haven't heard from yet, Katie, Hattie and Lindsay. Katie, I know you're now an appointed person so you're someone who works behind the scenes in lifting but you were a crane operator first of all. Yes. How did you get there? Five years ago I was a recruitment consultant so I worked in

trade and labour and I just noticed that people were earning a lot more money than I was and it came down to that I didn't have any skills I didn't have the qualifications it wasn't that I aspired to be a crane operator but I thought would construction have a place for me could I fit in somewhere and I sent out a CV and my company Langer Rook rang me up they said we've got a new apprenticeship would you be interested in coming for an interview and I'd never thought about being a crane operator I didn't think women operated cranes I wasn't told in school that women even worked in construction really well they didn't because weren't you the first female apprentice I was yeah for my company I came through I was the first female lifting technician apprentice so we've got five other

females now um out 250 we're getting there we're getting there slowly but there isn't a lot of women in general that do crane operating anyway i think maybe around london i probably know 10 in total how do people respond to you when they find out what you do people are generally shocked i remember when i first walked on site and just people stared at me and it was really daunting and it was And it's a moment that I talk about a lot. So I often say if I was a younger apprentice, if I was younger walking into that situation, I wouldn't have got past the first day. The only thing that got me through that day is because I knew I wanted to change my life. But even then I'm going, should I go back to recruitment?

What am I doing here? Why am I here? Why am I putting myself through this? You're clearly very self-motivated you're talking about it in a very pragmatic way but how old were you when you first when you first started oh I was 29 when I first started so uh quite late I guess for an apprentice I felt old for an apprentice so I think when you think of apprenticeships you think of younger people doing it and it's it's not the case especially not in crane operating but if i if i was fresh out of school and i hadn't worked before i'd have gone that

first day and never gone back again hattie you're a plumber but that wasn't something that appealed to you when you were at school why not uh well when i was at school uh i was always handy i had a nickname maintenance well that was it one word maintenance yeah that was your nickname yeah whenever something out broke maintenance fixes for us so they bring me their broken things I put them back together I was always fascinated in how things worked and what have you but you know when you're kind of 15 16 and you're trying to choose what you do you don't want to do something different you want to be the same as everyone else so that was what that was what I did I became a teacher and teaching wasn't fulfilling me so in 1990 at the age of 27 I decided I was going to try and do something else

I knew I wanted to do something that was handy so I'll just look back basically because when I was at school in the 70s I wanted to do engineering I wanted to do technical drawing metal work and they strictly told me in my school those are boys subjects you can't do them they actually said that they actually said that those are those subjects are for boys that's what they did I don't know if they did it in all schools in the 70s they did it in mine so I had to do needlework and cookery and what have you so I uh I decided at 27 I wanted to do something else and I looked back into what I really wanted to do and engineering and all of that sort of stuff.

So I went to an evening class, plumbing evening class, to see if I would like it and I loved it. And then I transferred onto a full-time course and like you, Katie, everybody was young. They were all like between 16 and 18 and just a load of lads a couple of them were the sons of the and sons companies some of them were just off the street just to keep them off the street not even necessarily wanting to be plumbers when I transferred my course up to Leeds College I was the only woman in the entire college trainee and I had to use the female staff toilets because they didn't have facilities for female trainees

at that time they were really brilliant though really really supportive um they loved me because I loved plumbing but I loved it absolutely loved it every minute haven't regretted it for a single moment but I couldn't get a job I wrote to everyone it was a bit like you are you ringing for your son are you ringing for you are you ringing for your husband no i'm ringing for me oh no sorry we don't have any places is that why you set up your own company straight away as i always say nobody would employ me so i had to employ myself and the key thing here is it's women only stop cocks our plumbers are women yeah all our plumbers are women yeah all our plumbers are women but obviously our customers are everybody lindsay um you're not just a plasterer you're a decorated

plasterer you've won an award for what you do how did you get into it i was 33 at the time and i was nine months pregnant every job i've done has never fulfilled me um i've worked in retail banking and i just always had a passion for construction from a young age i always used Every job I've done has never fulfilled me. I've worked in retail, banking, and I just always had a passion for construction from a young age. I always used to help my uncle, and he was a builder, and I was always mixing cement for him. And it's just something that's always been there with me, and I kind of, as Harty was saying, it just was in a woman's world. And when I was in school, the type of things that we were told to go into

would be nursing and teaching, and construction never, ever came up at all. I think it was just when I was pregnant, I really thought, I dreaded going back to work. What were you doing at the time? At the time, I was working with the mental health. It's fantastic, such a rewarding job, but it just wasn't fulfilling me for my career. So that's when I decided I'm going to go into construction.

I'm going to do this. While you were nine months pregnant. I know, I know, I must be mad. Well, due to commitments, to financial commitments, I had a mortgage and I had a child as well, but it was three and a half at the time. And it was the only opportunity that I could have to take some time out to actually go to college and complete a course

and then when I completed the course Kavla came in and they had a shared apprenticeship scheme and they were able to offer me an opportunity to train with them and actually get paid at the same time so I didn't have to go back to work after my maternity which was fantastic for me because I was able to continue my career as a plasterer. What was it like being a plasterer? What was your first day like? Oh my gosh, I can't even begin to tell you.

No, please do. I've got pictures, I'm absolutely black. My first job was pulling a ceiling down up in the valleys. And honestly, I cried. I did. I cried. It was my first day.

And I thought to myself, I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm just... And the guy I was with, bless him, he was lovely. And he was just... He didn't know what to do at the time. And he was like, oh, look, come on. Now we'll be okay. And I was like, I've never laid on a ceiling before.

I was sweating pints. I was soaking. And I was like, yeah, but I've never laid on a ceiling before. I was sweating pints. I was soaking. And I was in this all-in-one suit. And I got pictures of me on site, honestly. And it's all you can see. I've got black all around my eyes. It was so funny. Okay, but that was day one.

What's it like now? What's a typical day like for you now? Well, for now, I'm actually off the tools now. And I've gone on to... Is that the phrase, um i'm actually off the tools now and i've gone on is that what the phrase off the tools now and i've gone into the technical side and the typical day for me now is still on site still going out to site and basically i'm pricing jobs we just make sure obviously that the projects are running financially on schedule and on time, because obviously time is money. Hattie's already talked about how important it was to have people who are supportive that you train with, that you work with. Did you have that kind of support?

Oh, absolutely. Everybody has been so supportive. Lecturers, even I remember my first day and I was walking into college and I had this little bump. And all the boys were just, they didn't know how to react at first. But when you get, when you obviously get talking to them, they were fantastic. I was like mother hen because, I mean, they were all 16. Were they all boys? All boys. I think every, I think I was in college for three years doing my plastering training. And each year there was one female plasterer.

Roma, you have written a book, Built. You've written about how you worked on the Shard. What did you do exactly with that project? Yes, so my role was as one of the structural engineers on the project. And we were a team of up to 10 structural engineers. And, you know, our job is really to kind of fight gravity, to fight wind. We've got all these different forces trying to attack our structures all the time. And what we do is basically kind of do the maths and physics to make sure that the buildings that we're designing stand up. So I did calculations, computer, hand-based, I sketched, I drew, again, computer

and hand-based. But I think the thing that surprised me the most about my time, you know, kind of coming into the industry was how much time you spend with other people. You do this degree, it's very technical. You're sitting there doing second order, partial differential equations or whatever. Excuse me. You then go into the office

and what you're actually doing is talking to people. So you're interacting with all the different kind of people we've got around the table today so I work with architects all the time work with other types of engineers and what I realize is that you have to be amazing at communication in order to really succeed in the construction industry and I think that's one thing I would really encourage any young people interested in our industry is not to just think about that technical thing the tools all of that but actually think about how do you relate to people. I'd be interested to know for all of you but I'll start with you Christina where did your aspiration to become an architect come

from and how much of it is it to do with perhaps having a family member you talked about your uncle being somebody you could look up to or having exposure to it in your family? I had no exposure. Well, I wanted to be prime minister. I decided to be prime minister when I was nine. But then I come from the Basque country and it was a really difficult place to grow up. When I was little, there was a lot of terrorism and you see things that you shouldn't when you are a child and so when I became 14 and I had to decide which route I was taking my mom sat me in the kitchen and said we need to have a chat you need to reconsider your choice because I don't want anything to happen to you so basically I thought okay what can I do that will serve society and kind of be somehow useful to other people? And I thought, actually, if you became an architect and you could design places where people could be themselves and enjoy.

So from squares where you go sit down with your grandma and feed the pigeons to theaters where you go and listen to music or even your own home so I thought that it could be a really good place to actually make a difference. How do you top that? Sorry to everyone else. Sarah? For me obviously I'm in the skills side of the industry now but I actually started in what we call building control which is building surveying and at the time for myself my situation was I was in foster care and I needed to work I was at 18 and needed to get a job so I wanted to learn and work at the same time so much much like other stories it was I need to earn money and I want to learn at the same time. You need to live.

Exactly. So wonderful experience building surveying. Fantastic job. Recommend it. Then moved into another part of the industry in the utility sector. And I was a site agent for a number of years. that's looking at manholes and all the pipework that you never see and that run all the cables for communications like BT and everything else and before I came into the skills side so for me there's so much variety in the industry that no matter where you are with your life circumstances

there's a place for you. I always knew I wanted to do something mathematical or to do with physics. I actually wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, so I had a slightly different... I love that everyone here is having a... Yes, I did as well, Rowan. You did as well. And there's a few of us. You still do.

I realised at some point that I was scared of roller coasters and I thought probably that doesn't bode well for becoming an astronaut. So I stuck with the maths and the physics. No one suggested to me that i ever study engineering so i studied physics at university and then kind of happened to be doing a work experience placement again earning money over the summer happened to be surrounded by engineers and thought oh they're doing something rather interesting and and then went from there so i kind of fell into it katie when i was school, I wanted to be a vet or a wrestler.

I didn't know astronauts or anything. These are great aspirations. And I suppose my early memory of being in primary school was we had a computer come in, just one. There was only one computer. And we all had to input things and it would print out what we should be when we were older. It said dog groomer.

I was really upset wanting to be a vet and it'd come out dog groomer. And then I went to secondary school and I went to university after that I did English literature at university hated it well it really wasn't for me like I said I never knew I could work in construction so this comes a bit of a shock to me when I was making my choices for university and things I didn't know anything about apprenticeships I didn't know about non-degree apprenticeships I didn't know about degree apprenticeships. I didn't know about non-degree apprenticeships. I didn't know about degree apprenticeships. So I just picked English. If I had my time again, I would have done a degree apprenticeship

because I think apprenticeships are brilliant. And it's the best thing I've ever done, becoming a crane operator and doing my apprenticeship. It changed my life. I was doing sales. I hated it. I pretty much hated everything I did. But like everyone else, you have to work and you have to earn a wage.

And construction's given me the ability to change my life, to earn a hell of a wage, to do something I really enjoy. I mean, when I was working in recruitment, I took home £1,300 a month. That was it. And, you know, you go into construction, you earn double that a month, three times that a month, if you put in the hours and the hard work. And I think just telling people that make the change do an apprenticeship it is for everyone i think it's brilliant didn't end up being a wrestler no it didn't happen though but give it

a go after yeah side hustle your side hustle um lindsey do you think you'd be doing what you're doing now honestly if you didn't have your uncle in your life? He was like a labourer. A labourer, yeah. How significant was that influence in your life? Oh, massive, massive. Even my brother. My brother was a mechanic, so I've always kind of had those male-dominated jobs around me growing up.

I was a bit of a tomboy. I was always out on the quad bike with my friend Lucy Pridmore. Just got a shout-out. Yeah, so I think, yeah, definitely it was a good influence for me. And Hattie? My dad didn't really do the DIYing or anything and it was always me and my mum and me and my mum put everything together and I was always interested in how things worked.

And I wanted to be a surgeon. I used to lay in bed at night and carry out operations. And read medical books and stuff like that. And then I realised that I was actually squeamish and couldn't really take the sight of blood. But now I'm a surgeon of people's houses. It's exactly the same thing. You've got the heart, you've got the veins and the blood and the water and the pipes and all of that.

So it's the same kind of thing. It's the heart of the building is the way the water works. And my initials actually are two H's and an O, so I'm actually an H2O. It's meant to be. It was absolutely meant to be when I think about it. If you missed the start of today's programme, we are talking about women in construction, if you hadn't guessed,

and I am joined by Roma Agrawal, Structured Engineer who worked on the Shard, Katie Kelleher, former crane operator who now works as an appointed person at Select Plant Hire, Hattie Hassan, founder of Stopcox Women Plumbers, also an author. Christina Landazcarati, chair, London Southeast National Association of Women in Construction. Sarah Fenton, partnerships director, Midlands and North CITB, which if you missed means Construction Industry Training Board. That's what it stands for. And we're also joined by Lindsay

Davis, a plasterer who's now trading to be a quantity surveyor. Now, Christina, you have spoken in the past about how long it takes for women to not only become architects but to be paid well. Do you think money is a major hurdle and how big of a challenge is that? Architects are not very good at business. We do it for the love of the job

and very often end up putting more time than we should. And this is generally. We don't do it for the money. However, it is quite frustrating when you find out that despite the fact that you are doing the same job as your colleagues, you are getting paid much less. So just to share an anecdote, I'm not giving names, but I used to work at a practice where I was running big projects and I was doing a really good job. I'm not being immodest, I'm just being

factual. And one day somebody printed the pay list of the whole office and forgot to pick it up from the printer. And another one of my friends cast an eye on it. And like a record, you know, she scanned through it and learned everybody's payment. So she came to me and said, would you like to know how little you are paid? And I said, no, I would not. And she said, no, no, no but seriously you have to be angry and i said yeah but you shouldn't have seen that information and she said no good thing she did yeah but um so she actually struggled with this piece of information because one of the things

that she she was wondering about is what do i do with this shall I pin it in the coffee room shall I shall I scan it and send it on an email shall I go person by person telling everybody um so at the time I was not unhappy with my salary but that kind of made me think okay my next review I need to actually go a bit higher yeah but it's not about you know when we talk about equal pay it's about fairness it's not about the money and it's about being valued in the same way as a man doing exactly the same job as you. As a brain operator, you all get paid the same, by the way. We all get paid exactly the same. Nobody gets any more than anyone else.

One of my favourite topics at the moment is about shared parental leave and men taking time off and so on. And ACOM pays men and women the same. You get the same pay for you know, for the same length of time that you take off. And for me, that makes a huge difference. Because we now see men, my male colleagues are taking more than two weeks off to look after their children. And I think that until we get that societal equality in how we look after our families families it's not going to really translate into the workplace Katie I was shocked to learn and I didn't know about these the statistics about the the number of construction workers who take their own lives yeah how do you deal with the isolation

of being a crane operator when you are on your own for most of the time i think it's it can be tough and it's one of them things that you either love and you love that time on your own or you just don't which is um like i was trained in tower cranes and crawler cranes so tower cranes you are up in the air and you could be up there all day depending on whether you want to come down or you don't want to come down um but then they do make themselves comfortable you can bring up a book and read it on your break but you do have constant contact with the people on the ground so you do have a radio and i mean lifting is very much about teamwork anyway so we work in lifting teams so you're not you're not really on your own you are part of a team i mean i worked with a hell of a lifting team at tottenham court road crossrail and it was one of the best teams I've ever worked with it was brilliant yeah across the industry this is a huge huge thing and every single day two construction

workers unfortunately take their lives every day every day there's a huge thing to combat here and it's not going to take one organisation or it's it's everyone looking out for each other and that's the great thing about the construction industry is that teamwork and that ethic. For example, from CITB's point of view, in terms of funding intervention, so we've committed a million pounds towards supporting this issue and actually getting mental health first aiders on site. So treating it exactly the same as physical first aid in that sense.

So we're funding this for over 6,000 on-site mental health first aiders. It is a significant challenge and an issue. But I do think that having women on-site, actually, from my perspective, my days on-site, we kind of are a bit more aware of people maybe around us. I do think there's a great role that women on site can play to help with that culture of being able to talk about things and being more open.

Patty? All of our plumbers are self-employed and one of the things that we say is be self-employed but not alone. Being self-employed is one of the kind of most isolating types you are working you know totally on your own sometimes you might not see another person if the people are out you know so you may not see another person the whole day I personally quite enjoy that alone time but it is like like you were saying it is one of the biggest killers of men in the industry is that type of suicide through that, I know. And I run a conference every year called Women Installers Together because women are very isolated in these roles.

And some of the women who attend as delegates have never seen another female plumber or gas engineer. And we're gradually building that event year on year and we're supported by the industry and it's fantastic because those industries are seeing this the need basically to bring more women into the industry to change the whole culture so that people don't want to kill themselves so that they love it and And I really do see, like you said, bringing more women in can just make the whole environment more nurturing. And I don't mean by being, I don't want to be anyone's mother. I would have had my own children. But the nurture, you know, just the way that we are, that we bring that into the industry.

And I think everybody will thrive then. It's not just about getting more women into the industry, but it's about how the whole culture changes so that women want to come into it, for one thing, and stay in it. And that the men who are in it can also thrive. What about challenging the stereotypes, the blockers people may have? So, I don't know, a boiler weighs too much for a woman to lift, for example. Somebody came home once and I'd hung a boiler eight foot up in the air on my own. He said to me, how did you hang that? And I said, with my brain.

And I think as women, if we are going to be smaller and I am small I can fit into like nooks and crannies where a lot of guys can't fit into you use your body differently if you have to do different things and I've learned to do that you learn about leverage Lindsay talking about the same thing stereotypes of what women can and can't do you talked about your first day being a nightmare how have you surprised yourself in the things that you've ended up doing? I was worried about the weights involved in construction, especially plastering. So I actually took it upon myself to go with a contractor for like three days experience just to see if I could lift like bags of dash up and scaffold in. And so I didn't want to obviously make myself look stupid if I was going to go out on site and not being able to lift things.

So how did that go? Those three days? Really well, actually. Yeah, I'm strong. You just do. I was really proud. There's obviously a business case for diversity in the industry. But in terms of gender, Roma, you design, do you think, structurally, do you think women offer something different in their overall vision?

I don't really believe that there's kind of biological differences between the way men and women do things. You know, it tends to be cultural. It tends to be the way we're brought up and so on. But I think for me, the main point is about the fact that we are designing for society we have to reflect that society if we are going to do the best if we

have a better mix of people in an office it just feels a bit more like the real world and you know you're used to some people going off at five o'clock to pick up their kids and so there's people with children the people without children there's people of different ages different backgrounds different festivals being celebrated it just just makes for a much, much more welcoming, fun, interesting environment. And that makes for a pleasant place for anyone to work. And I think that's really what it's about. Christina, do you think gender influences work? And just to use a ridiculous example, Zaha Hadid was accused of, as you you may know of designing the Qatari stadium to look like a vagina which she obviously denied um I just throw you off there completely

I actually think that the everybody designs based on their own personal experience so I think if you are a woman you experience the world in a different way. And therefore, that definitely affects the way you design, because you consider a different set of things. I mean, your body does things every month and, you know, and kind of this is, you know, something that you deal with. And therefore, you are able to think when you're designing a bathroom, I'm thinking just very practically, you are able to think when you are designing a bathroom i'm thinking just very practically you are able to think about things that maybe guys don't realize one thing just as a curiosity so i don't know if if you know this but the person who invented the fire escape was a woman the person who invented a central heating i'm not talking about the romance but you know kind of

central heating and you know as a kind of product it was a woman the person who invited invented cctv it was a woman there are many many inventions that know many of those yeah seriously there are like so many things that we use every day when we are designing and building and everything and they have been shaped by invisible women what do you think the biggest challenges are in the industry looking at it from a site perspective and you know how we inspire the next generation and when you work in a crane as a crane operator um you get up at five in the morning you go to work for seven you work all day till six seven o'clock then the lorry might be late so you might add an extra hour on that as a woman that could

be a big challenge luckily i don't have anything that i need to rush home for but you can't just step away from it you can't say no i can't do that lorry it has to stay here the job's not going to get done you do what needs to be done and we're looking at it in my company and what can we do to make that easier for people because people do have lives and you know we we suddenly have five women that we didn't have before what do we do if we get a pregnant woman if we get a woman who has a child and needs to come in a bit later leave a bit earlier could we job share crane operating 12 hour 13 hour day can we split that can we make it easier yeah it's going to cost a bit of money we're going to have to invest to make these changes but it needs to be done or else we're going to keep losing people we're never going to have any more female crane

operators because they're going to drop off and they won't be able to get back in because we're not making allowances that we need to make for them just to sum up what would your advice honest advice be for anyone who's listening thinking about a career career in any of the jobs that you've talked about, a career in construction, any advice you wish you were perhaps given? I would say to anybody, if you want to do something, do it. We shouldn't have to say to somebody, a girl, if you want to do it, keep at it, don't give up, do it. It should just be, if you want to do it, brilliant. How do we make that happen?

That's what we're working towards within the plumbing industry anyway as an architect if people are thinking about studying architecture maybe consider doing it as an apprenticeship obviously you don't end up with the kind of builds that you end up with if you study the traditional way and you can start getting practical experience as you are doing it and And I think this is fantastic. Go on the internet. On YouTube, there's loads of examples of role models of women in construction and what it's like. But also there's the goconstruct.org site. You might think architecture, bricklaying. There are so many roles.

I never had a plan. I still don't have a plan. But whatever floats your boat there is something there for you right now i would advise people to be curious about the world around them to question what materials have been used how was it built who was the person behind this what's underneath my feet what can i see um look up into the sky and think about all the different forces acting on buildings whatever it might be and i mean children are like that aren't they until they're I don't know five or six years old and maybe us as adults need to kind of re-rediscover our childlike curiosity about the

world. I'm so pro-apprenticeships and I never knew about apprenticeships before and somebody supporting me paying for me to do tickets to operate cranes, learn things I never thought I'd be able to do and that support. And then I come out the end of it and I'm working on a site like Tottenham Court Road, Crossrail. And, you know, my dad's a fifth generation bricklayer and he was always going up London and pointing out buildings that he did and said, I built that, I built that, you know. And now I can walk past Tottenham Court Road and go, I built that.

And it doesn't matter that there was, you know, hundreds ofham Court Road and go I built that and it doesn't it doesn't matter that there was you know hundreds of other people on there I built it I mean I'm 37 now being able to to restart my career is fantastic be who you want to be don't be afraid of just being different because we're not all the same so be different different. It's fine. It's been an absolute joy speaking to you all. Thank you all for coming in, coming onto the programme today. Roma Agrawal, Katie Kelleher, Hattie Hassan, Christina Lanza-Ascaretti, Sarah Fenton and Lindsay Davis. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year,

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.