Published - 11th March 2026
Last week marked both Women In Construction Week, and of course International Women’s Day.
There was the usual flurry of events, articles, and social media posts celebrating women’s contribution to the construction sector. As always, it was wonderful to see women’s work recognised and highlighted by so many organisations, and making the breadth of roles available to women in our industry more visible is always a positive.
Several companies used International Women’s Day as an opportunity to share wisdom and advice: MKM Building Supplies asked women from around the business what advice they would give to their younger selves, and shared the notes in a LinkedIn carousel. Leeds-based contractor Caddick Construction looked at what had changed for women in the industry over the years. Housebuilder Barratt Redrow shared stories from colleagues who are helping pave the way for the next generation of women in the business.
Here at Harris, we celebrated the women who have inspired us in our careers – from managers to mentors, friends and family members. Over the years that we have been celebrating Women In Construction Week, I like to believe that the industry has remained consistently committed to diversifying the workforce, to promoting women, and to ensuring that people of all genders and backgrounds are welcomed and celebrated.
That said, it is worth looking at the realities behind the platitudes. And the best place to start is with the largest company’s most recent gender pay gap reports. We have looked at the top four construction companies in the UK: Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall, Kier, Laing O’Rourke and Mace. And while there are positives here, what becomes clear is that progress is slower than perhaps we might hope.
Since 2018 employers with more than 250 employees have been required to report on their gender pay gap, either on 31st March for most public authority employers, or 5th April for all other private, voluntary, and other public authority employers. The gender pay gap is calculated based on the difference between the average pay of men and women in an organisation.
Balfour Beatty’s gender pay gap report is quick to highlight progress in the right direction. And it is good news, with the pay gap closing from 29.9 per cent in 2018 to 22.6 per cent in 2023/24, a significant reduction. Morgan Sindall’s most recent report states that it has seen a reduction in the past year – albeit by just one per cent. Kier’s report sadly bucks the trend, with the pay gap widening from 20.6 per cent in 2023 to 21 per cent in 2024. And Mace reports a modest improvement too – an 0.8 per cent reduction in the pay gap between women and men, to 25.4 per cent. Laing O’Rourke reports on its pay gap differently, highlighting that women in the organisation are paid 5.4 per cent less than men in terms of their hourly rate. This has closed from a 6.2 per cent gap in 2023.
All five organisations also point out that they employ significantly more men than women – in the case of Mace, men make up 67 per cent of the workforce, and all point out that the disparity in the figures is driven by far fewer women occupying senior positions within the companies – something all five organisations claim to be working to rectify.
As the data above shows, any improvement in the gender pay gap in the construction sector has been slow to achieve – and there are still reversals, as Kier’s most recent report shows. Women are still far outnumbered within the sector, and still vastly underrepresented in senior leadership roles.
The largest construction companies have been investing in diversifying their workforce for several years, but the gap is not only not closed – it lags significantly behind the UK average. As of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics, the UK gender pay gap currently stands at 6.9 per cent – a third of the gap that Balfour Beatty, the UK’s largest construction company, is celebrating. That puts the UK’s largest construction companies significantly off the pace when it comes to paying men and women in the industry equally.
So while it’s important to celebrate women in the industry, and all the many ways they contribute to construction, we must remember that there is still a very long way to go before women achieve parity in our sector.
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