The National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) has applauded the announcements made by the Victorian, Western Australian and ACT Governments to include gender equality as part of their procurement policies.
The Victorian Government recently announced its Building Equality Policy, which will see the state aim for targets of three percent women in trade, seven percent in non-trade labour, 35 percent women in management and supervision and four percent female apprenticeships on all publicly funded projects worth more than $20 million. The state hopes to reach the targets by 2024.
Suppliers to the Victorian Government will now be required to provide a Gender Equality Action Plan (GEAP) for each project when bidding for government-funded projects. It is the first time a requirement of this kind has been enacted in Australia.
Western Australia’s Women’s Interests Minister Simone McGurk announced a 12-month pilot to introduce gender equality clauses into public sector procurement, with suppliers with over 100 employers required to provide a compliance letter to indicate whether they have met Federal gender equality requirements. NAWIC hopes that this is the first step towards achieving systemic cultural change with the next step being the requirement of compliance.
The ACT Government also recently announced bidders for the construction of a new public school will be required to have 100 percent female management teams and with women employed by every trade subcontractor. According to the 2016 Census, only 2.6 percent of construction workers in the ACT are women, with the government hoping to raise that number to ten.
NAWIC says programs adopted by the ACT Government will help to create a more equitable status quo and has urged other states and territories to follow suit to encourage strong female leadership that will provide inspiration for future generations.
The Association has called on the Federal Government to utilise WGEA reporting to determine and exclude companies from their projects who are non-compliant with the Workplace Gender Equality Act. NAWIC says procurement policy decisions such as these are an important step to ensure women in construction are more visible to start changing preconceived views of the role of women in the industry which will enable a new generation of women to see that a career in construction is available to them.
