Lessons construction can learn from other sectors

The construction industry is traditionally considered a white, maledominated industry. The UK construction industry is at its busiest for a decade and is suffering from skill shortages in both craft and manual trades, and at the professional level. The issue regarding the lack of women in construction has become more prominent recently, attracting government and industry-wide attention due to this potential skill shortage facing the industry. To meet these targets the industry cannot rely on recruiting the traditional male- dominated workforce. Therefore the UK government is examining ways to encourage women into traditionally male-dominated jobs. Since then a number of initiatives have been introduced promoting construction careers to women; however they have yet to achieve the desired effect. The main aim of this paper is to investigate how the construction industry can successfully recruit and retain professional women by looking at what lessons can be learnt from other sectors such as medicine. Hence this paper looks into other sectors, in particular the medical sector and how it has become an accessible career for women. It also focuses on the culture of other sectors to establish the influence this has over the employment of female professionals

Employability of women managers in the education sector: A study on their leadership role

The teaching profession both in this country and internationally is, with few exceptions, predominated by women as it has traditionally been seen as a ‘suitable’ job for women. However, a look at the statistics reveals that despite the large numbers of women in the profession, they are greatly under-represented in positions of management. Thus the underrepresentation of women in positions of senior management within educational institutions continues to be a matter of some concern. Studies on gender and leadership have revealed a number of barriers to women seeking educational leadership and management positions. This paper discusses the status of women at senior management level within the educational sector. Previous studies have found differences in leadership styles in terms of gender and managerial hierarchy. Discussions on the gender differentiation of leadership have centered on the different qualities and styles of leadership of men and women; that is, the so-called masculine and feminine styles of leadership. In this context this paper examines the literature relating to the leadership styles typically adopted by women in order to explain how such styles will have an impact on the educational sector

Women in construction: A study on leadership

The women participation rate in construction sector both in academia and industry is very low, particularly at senior management level. The statistical analyses of western countries reveal that while the numbers of women entering management positions continues to increase, women remain under-represented in senior executive positions. It is important to attract and retain professional women with good leadership qualification and skills in the senior positions in order to maintain a good standard and professionalism within the construction sector. In this context, this paper will examine the literature relating to the educational and executive leadership in construction associated with Women. Focus will be given on the reasons behind the under-representation of women both at educational and executive leadership levels within the construction sector. The study also examines the barriers faced by women entering senior executive position

Employability of women managers in higher education sector: a study on their leadership qualities

The teaching profession both in this country and internationally is, with few exceptions, dominated by women as it has traditionally been seen as a ‘suitable’ job for women. However, a look at the statistics reveals that despite the large number of women in the profession, they are greatly under-represented in positions of management in higher education (HE). Thus this under-representation of women continues to be a matter of some concern. The background of this paper identifies the status of women managers within the higher education sector. The leadership styles typically adopted by women managers are then discussed. These styles are taken into further analysis in order to find out whether any such styles are of use in terms of filling the leadership gaps in higher education. In this context, this paper examines the literature relating to gender, leadership styles and higher education in order to explore how the leadership qualities of women managers will have a contribution towards the higher education sector

Combined spectral and spatial processing of ERTS imagery data

A procedure for extracting a set of textural features for ERTS-1 MSS data is presented. The textural features were combined with a set of spectral features and were used to develop a classification algorithm for identifying the land use categories of blocks of digital MSS data. The classification algorithm was derived from a training set of 314 blocks and tested on a set of 310 blocks. The overall accuracy of the classifier was found to be 83.5% on seven land use categories