Gender and Ethnic Minority Exclusion within Construction Dissertation

Gender and Ethnic Minority Exclusion within Construction - Dissertation Example The women contribute about 49% to the labor force of the United Kingdom. But they constitute just 9% to the entire  labor force employed in the construction industry. The part by part figures of this small number of women participating in the construction industry reveal some further facts. A tenth of all these women working in the construction industry is in design and management and a hundredth works as a tradesperson. A vast majority, about 84% work in the secretariat of the construction companies. The other fractions are 2% as sole traders and 4% as micro-enterprises. (Where Have All the Women Gone? n.d) The data shows that majority of the women employed in the construction industry work from office (Byrne, Clarke, & Meer, 2005). Similar is the case for racial discrimination. In the USA in 1991 only 32700 Afro-American people worked in the construction industry out of the total 4.7 million people employed. 1n 1977 out of the total revenue of $73.87 churned out by the constructi on industry, the black construction firms accounted for a mere $758 million. Studies carried out in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and elsewhere have confirmed the existence of wide racial discrimination in the construction industry. (A Croson to Bear, 1992) There has been increased participation of the ethnically minor groups and women in the entire labor force. This can be accounted to the fact that there has been an increase in consciousness regarding this and policy, changes to encourage their participation. The European Union has undertaken a policy to overcome this segregation of the labor market. However, the representation of the aforementioned groups in the skilled construction group has been dismal. More or less in every part of Europe, this discrimination exists irrespective of the nature or structure of the construction industry. The incidence of such discrimination can be experienced in the deregulated industry Italy and Spain as well as the regulated and training oriented industries of England and Denmark.