Why Women in Construction Need Leadership Training, Not Just Representation

The Australian construction industry has spent the better part of a decade focused on a single metric for women in construction leadership: headcount. Get more women through the door. Hit the target. Report the improvement. Move on.

This approach has produced modest, fragile gains. Women now make up around 13% of the construction workforce — up from 11% a decade ago. At the current rate, parity is decades away. More importantly, the women who do enter the industry leave at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts, citing culture, exclusion, lack of sponsorship, and the absence of visible career pathways.

Representation is necessary. It is not sufficient. What changes cultures — and what keeps women in the industry — is leadership training. Not training for women. Training for everyone, with women’s advancement and inclusion as an explicit outcome.

Woman in professional leadership training workshop — Photo via Pexels — used with attribution

The Retention Problem Is a Leadership Problem

The most cited reasons women leave construction — hostile culture, harassment, exclusion, lack of flexible work, absence of mentors and sponsors — are all products of leadership failure. They are not inevitable features of the industry. They are the outcomes of leadership environments where those behaviours are tolerated, ignored, or actively modelled from the top.

Why Women Leave Construction — and the Leadership Connection

Reason for Leaving	% Citing This Reason*	Leadership Failure It Points To
Exclusionary culture	62%	Leaders who tolerate or model exclusion
Lack of career advancement	55%	No sponsorship or visibility at leadership level
Harassment or bullying	48%	Leaders who fail to act, minimise, or gaslight
Inflexible work arrangements	41%	Leaders who see flexibility as weakness or favouritism
No visible role models in senior roles	38%	Pipeline never built; succession planning excludes women

*Based on research by the National Association of Women in Construction and ACCI. Figures are indicative; multiple responses permitted.

What Leadership Training for Women Actually Addresses

There are two distinct but complementary training needs in this space. The first is leadership development for women themselves — building the skills, confidence, and visibility that enable women to advance into leadership roles and stay there. The second, and arguably more important, is training for the (mostly male) leaders who currently hold power in the industry.

That second type of training is what is almost entirely absent in Australia’s construction sector. You cannot fix an exclusionary culture by training only the people who are excluded from it.

Two Types of Training — Both Essential

Training FOR Women

Leadership presence and communication
Navigating male-dominated environments
Negotiation and self-advocacy
Building networks and mentors
Managing psychosocial hazards unique to their experience

Training FOR Existing Leaders

Recognising and addressing unconscious bias
Creating genuinely inclusive teams
Sponsoring women’s advancement actively
Responding to harassment appropriately
Modelling inclusive behaviours daily

The Grant-Funded Model and What It Proves

EPIC Services recently submitted a grant application to deliver women’s leadership training for women working in male-dominated industries — a two-year program targeting 80 participants across two cohorts in Tasmania, delivered in partnership with a specialist leadership trainer.

The structure of this program reflects the understanding that leadership training for women in construction is not a one-off workshop. It is a sustained investment in capability, confidence, and connection — and it works best when the organisation’s own leaders are developing simultaneously, creating the conditions for what participants learn to actually be applied.

The conversations shifting across the sector — from Tasmania to New South Wales, from individual organisations to government-funded programs — suggest that this understanding is finally gaining traction. The question is whether the industry is willing to move fast enough to make genuine change before another generation of talented women walks out the door.

Explore EPIC Elevate — our leadership training built specifically for infrastructure and construction. Or contact Angela directly to discuss what this work could look like for your organisation.

Angela Hucker is the founder of EPIC Services Group and one of Australia’s leading voices on women in construction and construction culture reform. She has 30+ years of hands-on industry experience.