International Women’s Day 2023

Head of sales Samantha Williams, senior sales executive Zoe Ball and land manager Terri-Anne Cross are highlighting the wealth of opportunities for women in the construction industry in a bid to inspire the next generation.

March 8^th is International Women’s Day 2023 and in the construction industry, the workforce currently has just 16% female representation. Samantha, Zoe and Terri-Anne Cross are working hard to encourage more women into the industry over the next few years.

Samantha Williams, started out as a sales consultant before working her way up to where she is today. Sam believes that if children of a school age physically see or meet women working in the industry, this will be a huge catalyst to getting more females working in construction.

“At Prospect Homes, there are women in all departments, and I think this is crucial as not only does it show that women can work across all specialties, it’s also great to have women involved at every stage of the housebuilding process. Women have a huge influence when it comes to buying a home, so I think it’s so important that there is female input into how a home looks or is built. Whether it’s from the commercial team who arrange the purchase of materials used in building the home or the architectural team who design the homes.

“We’ve recently been into a school close to where we’re building homes in Whalley, Lancashire, to educate children about all the varying roles and I’m pleased to say that it was a team made up of mostly women. Even if we inspire one girl into the industry then we’ve done a good job.”

Zoe Ball started in the new homes industry seven years ago, after being a semi-professional dressage rider. Zoe says she would like to see more encouragement for young girls to consider roles within the construction industry: “I think we need to let young girls know that there are other roles out there that are still construction related but aren’t necessarily a site manager role. Being a trade on site is a great option but I think most associate being a trade with being covered in mud and heavy-lifting. This isn’t always the case.

“If I think back to when I was at school, I hated sitting in a classroom so doing something like an apprenticeship would have been ideal for me. It just wasn’t an option for girls unlike today.”

Terri-Anne Cross studied Planning at University before going onto doing a Masters in Environmental Planning. As far as planning teams go, Terri-Anne says they’ve always had a good balance of male and female employees but teams on site building the homes have always been predominantly male: “I am seeing a slow change in site teams and there are more females coming through in trade and site manager positions which is great. I think highlighting women in senior positions such as directors or on the board of directors is really important too because it shows women can be involved at all levels.”