International Women's Day 2021!
March 8, 2021 is International Women’s Day! We are so proud to recognize and celebrate the women at NorLand – here’s to you!
International Women’s Day (IWD) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women’s achievements or rally for women’s equality.
The campaign theme for IWD 2021 is “Choose To Challenge”. A challenged world is an alert world. We can choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. And from challenge comes change!
Our industry has its own challenges with gender inequality. It is no secret that the construction industry is male dominated. At NorLand (as of January 2021), the approximate percentage of total women employed is 11%. The approximate percentage of women employed offsite is 26% and onsite is 4%. It isn’t just NorLand – in 2019, only 12% of the BC construction sector identified as women. Check out this article to read about some of the factors as to why these numbers exist and how we can support women in construction to improve female representation. It’s a lot to unpack, but important that we do.
It’s not all bad news! Women remain heavily outnumbered across the industry, but there has been significant progression. Groups like Canadian Construction Women (CCW) and Canadian Association of Women in Construction (CAWIC) help women connect with each other in our industry, and individual organizations are expanding their recruitment channels to attract more women to their workforce. There are also women gaining traction in leadership positions, which directly impacts decision-making.
We reached out to some of the women at NorLand to hear about their own work experiences and what International Women’s Day means to them. The responses were so overwhelming and inspiring, that we decided to feature one or two every week on our NorLand News page and social media channels. March is “History of Women” month, and we are proud to share these experiences and stories of our own NorLand women.
Teammates Get Treated Like Family. Continue to support and lift each other up. #ChooseToChallenge gender inequality and make your voice heard. We look forward to sharing more as the month goes on, but for now, wear purple in support and awareness of IWD and take a moment to appreciate and celebrate the women around you and in your life. Cheers to them!
