ABC chairman’s message: Women play a growing role in construction, but barriers remain - by Luiza Mills

Earlier this month we celebrated Women in Construction Week. This is a perfect opportunity to highlight the growing role women play in our industry. As of 2024, 11.2% of the U.S. construction workforce was female. All told, there were about 1.34 million women working in our industry, up from 802,000 in 2012.

Just as encouraging is the fact that women in construction are closer to achieving wage parity than are women in the economy as a whole. Nationwide, women earn 83 cents for every dollar men earn, but in construction women earn 94% of what men do. We can’t rest on our laurels until the gender wage gap disappears, but these numbers represent progress. 

The same is true for the overall number of women in our industry. Although participation among women is growing, with ABC estimating that the industry will need an additional 349,000 workers to meet demand this year, 11.2% is not enough. Our companies must attract qualified employees of every background regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or national origin.

Yet amid this generally encouraging news came a big step backward earlier this month, when Massachusetts governor Maura Healey announced a union-only project labor agreement for the $1.2 billion replacement of a drawbridge connecting Boston and Cambridge. Excluding the 82.7% of the Massachusetts construction workforce from a project hurts those workers and the taxpayers forced to pay more for projects due to reduced competition, few are more hurt by PLAs than women and minorities. 

As the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts wrote to state lawmakers in 2021, PLAs require contractors to hire solely from union halls, where “most Black construction workers and other workers of color do not belong.” Both Women Construction Owners and Executives and the National Black Chamber of Commerce have gone on record opposing PLAs. 

We’re living through a time of great progress in the construction industry, but many challenges remain. Few are more pressing than the need to include all qualified workers in the construction workforce and doing that will require us to redouble our efforts on behalf of free and open competition. 

Luiza Mills is the chairman of Associated Builders and Contractors Inc.-Mass. Chapter and is a senior vice president at Interstate Electrical Services Corp., North Billerica, Mass.