Women make up less than 20% of Switzerland’s construction workforce. In some fields such as metal construction, scaffolding and roofing the proportion of women is around 5%. Potential reasons for this include gender-specific conditioning and social norms and the high proportion of men in sector. A survey published this week points to other reasons.

Between December 2022 and March 2023, Unia, a Swiss union, surveyed 300 women working in construction in Switzerland about their working conditions.
A total of 54% reported sexual harassment, 34% from time to time, 15% often and 4% all the time. Harassement was perpetrated by mainly by staff of other companies, but also by clients, colleagues and superiors.
The women surveyed reported being belittled, for example being told they aren’t strong enough, being treated disrespectfully, being the target of sexist comments and jokes and receiving remarks about their appearance.
Another widespread complaint was a lack of clean toilets. 73% of women considered this a problem. Less than 9% described this as of little (2%) or no importance (6%).
Nicolas Rufener, head of Geneva’s building association, told RTS that it is unfortunately true that building sites are male dominated, which can lead to problems. If we want more women in construction we must provide safe, acceptable conditions. Currently, women remain rare on building sites. Rufener thinks that unacceptable male behaviour is related to this gender imbalance. More women on construction worksites will improve male behaviour, he thinks.
More on this:
Unia survey (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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