Increasing females representation in a male dominated workforce

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Need your help…

I working for a company who provide hygiene services. Our Washroom Service Driver workforce is heavily male dominated, we need to make changes to increase female representation. Can you help me by answering the following questions.

1. What do you look for in an employer?
2. Where do you go when your looking to apply for a new career opportunity?

Any other thoughts on this subject would be greatly appreciated, as a female working as a Recourcing Manager in this organisation I want to do a good job at representing us women.

Flexibility wrt hours is going to be your main way of helping women.

What I look for:

• Women in senior positions
• Flexible work practices / wfh / part-time being easily and commonly available and used
• career progression for women
• women's leadership network - to share journeys and support other women
• a strong women population (40-50%)
• diversity

Senior women- I took the only job I interviewed for where there were women in my direct line management so my bosses boss in this case. Others all brought in adjacent women, peer women etc to have women be part of the interviews (that’s important to do by the way if you don’t have directly responsible women) but not quite re same.
Culture re flex - my now boss first met me for an informal chat near his house as he was doing school drop off that morning, I took that as a good sign. I used to work from home one day a week, I would simply say that. If I ever got surprise about it or it needed thinking about, I’d be out. This is not relevant for an on-site job I guess!
On-site - I haven’t had a lot of issues but it sounds a very operational worksite, toilet access needs to be not 20m away for men and a mile away for women for example.

For me this is very practical, as I have often worked in a male dominated workforce and I enjoy it just fine.

The things I tend to look for now tend to revolve around some kind of flexibility in times and schedules. I like to be able to be home for either school drop off or pick up. I need to have some flexibility to take time for kids appointments, or maybe even sick days.

I like being able to have benefits on somewhat fewer hours than is usual, or even partial benefits.

When I was younger I was also more interested in things like maternity leave, and probably the gold standard was an employer that would top up my maternity pay (maybe not a factor in the UK system I was in Canada.)

In terms of the work, I like to be able to do a few different kinds of things rather than the same thing all the time, and I prefer to have a fair bit of independence in my work, and some contact with other people.

Women who are in receipt of tax credits will be unable to apply for jobs that are as and when required, so to recruit them you need to offer some contracts that are fixed pay and fixed hours.

Good pay. Close to public transport. Flexibility. Also, marketing of job and an interview process that don't sound exclusionary or as though they're just ticking the diversity boxes. So the women in any images aren't tokenistic, the women on the interview panel fit as well as the men do, are as confident and aren't talked over (something I saw happen a lot in tech.). If there aren't any or many women visible in the department when getting a tour, then someone like the line manager directly addressing that fact and making it clear I'd be welcome.

I'm not in the UK at the moment so not sure if my job sourcing is relevant. I use services like LinkedIn and industry specific job listings as well as network connections.

What does a Washroom Service Driver do? I am delivering items (perhaps implied by the "Driver" but)? Am I going to client sites by car and servicing washrooms (and does that mean plumbing)?
I think for a non-office based job where I would be visiting client sites my concerns would be:

• my safety (particularly if I was a lone female having to work in the men's toilets at a site I hadn't visited before)
• certainty of hours. Knowing when I'll finish is vital for collecting DC from school & childcare. If I am fixing things, what happens if I a job takes longer than expected? Can I leave it unfinished? If a driver, what happens if there is bad traffic

• am I expected to wear a uniform? If so, what is it made from and what style is it. I'm short & pear shaped so uniforms designed for men just don't work on me. Even if it's just a company t-shirt or jumper, I wouldn't want to wear it as it will naturally be far too long for me meaning I have to massively upsize for it to fit over my hips

- if the company is male dominated what is the environment and culture like back at base? If there is a staff room or similar, will I be expect to listen to "banter"? Is there somewhere else I can go?

Senior woman but in a totally different - albeit also heavily male dominated - setting:

PP have already made good points. I'd like to add the following ...

1. Unequivocal, vocal commitment to women - especially in heavily male dominated jobs - that leaders (regardless of sex) stand accountable for, and that goes beyond mere tokenism.

1. Policies and programmes that acknowledge diversity among women and support for "non-traditional" female employees. A personal pet-peeve of mine are "woman-focussed" workplace initiatives that are exclusively about part-time hours, childcare, and (yes, sadly a real former workplace of mine) offering personal styling and makeup sessions "for a professional look". This is all good stuff (except the hair and makeup) but if not done right perpetuates the notion that women work "as their little hobby" and that our primary focus is family. True for some of us - others are very career-focussed and ambitious, and that's just as okay too!

1. Speaking of which: family / parenting initiatives that are equally as geared towards the male workforce. Will not directly benefit female employees unless they're in a relationship with a colleague but does do wonders for fostering a company culture that regards both sexes as equally responsible for both work and personal stuff.

1. A strong ethics and compliance culture and sound mechanisms for reporting issues without the fear of backlash or retaliation.

That's about all I can think of.

I work in a very male dominated industry.

Honestly, when looking at roles, the role itself (seniority, line management, budget etc) and pay are primary considerations. Then location, options for flexible working and general team culture (would be put off if it's hierarchical, very old school, against change etc). I don't particularly care about the gender make up as I assume and have experienced that I will be able to influence it from a position of leadership. By making hiring decisions and pushing a diversity agenda. To date I haven't experienced sexism or racism (am not white) so maybe this is why it's not a consideration. I do spend a lot of time mentoring younger women and take them with me as i progress - particularly on how to be more outspoken, negotiate pay and advocate for themselves.

I think if you do start bringing in women into an organisation that's heavily male, female to female mentoring is a great way to ensure retention. Stopping the laddie culture that can sometimes prevail - coming down hard on it. And mostly changing up hr policy and culture to support mothers - think is the real reason we start losing women in senior management. Flexible working, maternity leave, not penalising for leaving early to do school pick ups etc

Oddly the pp who mentioned uniforms has got me thinking. I'm in an almost exclusively male dominated place. Around 600 men to 30 women. And the uniform is entirely male. Not one single item is bought for the women. I do kind of get the idea, keep costs down and pointless for so few women. But when I'm wearing the mens shorts in summer, I really think about how unfair that is. Personally I give no shits about uniform but it does send the message that even though we are few, no one actually cares.
My pay is very good for my department and its reasonably flexible. I could ask to change hours permanently too if I wanted and due consideration would happen and probably would get the change I wanted.
I've been here a long time and am just about to reluctantly look for a new job, I need to think about doing something else full time for more money and less physical as I'm getting older. I cant see me doing my job in 15 years. I'm falling apart now. So for now I'll be looking on indeed and similar.

"3. Speaking of which: family / parenting initiatives that are equally as geared towards the male workforce. Will not directly benefit female employees unless they're in a relationship with a colleague but does do wonders for fostering a company culture that regards both sexes as equally responsible for both work and personal stuff."

I'm have seen this work in my organisation. Family friendly policies must be as far as possible aimed at both male and female parents. There's been an encouraging uptake of young dads taking parental leave and flexible working, and it's helped to normalise it for everyone rather than make it only a women's issue. Then you can decouple parenting/caring and other sex related issues.

OP, is that a van based type job? I think issues for women would be personal safety/lone working (including on client site), appropriate uniform and PPE, reasonable hours, manual handling, access to welfare during the day on the road. I can't think any of these would be show stoppers for the right person though. And I expect some clients would be quite pleased to see a female driver turn up.

In the end the first requirement in a job is that you can see yourself doing it.

Maybe make some training or promotional videos or commission some photo showing a diverse workforce?

I don't mind being the only woman on a team (construction) or wearing my site gear because it's part of my job but I suppose I feel I belong there, because its stated from the top down the industry is trying to increase female participation. So you need the company to be committed right down to team supervisors etc so if there was any harassment etc it would be clamped down on.

In the end if it's a decently paid secure role, you might get women looking for a step up from say cleaning jobs?

Is this job mainly going to different sites and making sure the various equipment in the washroom is working, stocked, etc?

I know that studies on jobs women take tend to suggest that overall, most women prefer on balance to work more with people than with things. So any job that is mainly dealing with things may attract fewer women applicants. One way of trying to get around that could be restructuring the work to make it more mixed or to maybe work in a team or in pairs.

The other thing that occurs is to think about the pipeline to someone applying to work in this kind of job. Where are they coming from and what kinds of previous experience are they likely to have? If those areas are also short on women you may not get many coming from those places. SO thinking about alternate entrance to the jobs you want to fill where more women might see and think about them could be helpful.