Women in FM
Gender inequality in the labor market continues to be a major problem around the world. Not only has women’s participation in the labor market fallen globally in recent years, but serious inequalities between women and men have also emerged in other economic opportunity indicators. Although women have re-entered the workforce at higher rates than men after the pandemic, leading to a small improvement in gender equality in the labor force participation rate since 2022, the differences remain wide overall and become evident along a few specific dimensions. Women continue to face higher unemployment rates than men; The global unemployment rate is around 4.5% for women and 4.3% for men. Even when women do secure employment, they often face substandard working conditions: a significant part of the recovery in employment since 2020 is attributable to informal employment; thus, four out of every five jobs created for women are in the informal economy; For men, this rate is two out of every three jobs.
The workplace and facilities management industry is a male-centric field, with men outnumbering women in facilities management roles globally. According to statistics; On average, women make up 22% of the global facilities management workforce; However, this distribution is not equal across continents and regions. For example, the North America leads the way with a 25% female employment rate, while in the Middle East, women represent only 5% of the facilities management workforce. This gap in gender distribution in the workforce widens further at higher levels of the hierarchy. Nearly a third of entry-level roles in facilities management are held by women; This rate is significantly higher than other sectors. However, only 15% of women can hold senior positions in facility management. The reasons for this alarming inequality are; lack of flexibility, gender-unfriendly workspaces, rigid protocols and lack of female mentors, etc.
According to the IFMA’s report “Women in FM: Trends in the Workplace”; the majority of FM professionals consider facility operations as their primary job function, regardless of their gender. Facility operations has the largest portion of women facility managers at 70%, followed by real estate (7%), construction and projects (4%) and interior design and space planning (4%). Women are more likely to hold design related jobs and less likely to hold engineering related jobs than men in FM.
However, there has been a change in this gender inequality in FM in the last few years. A study by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the proportion of women in entry-level facilities management in the US is approaching 50%. There is also a significant increase in the number of female employees in leadership positions. The awareness created at the management level had a great impact on this.
As Meetrooms, we fulfill our responsibility to ensure that women are adequately represented in the FM industry. We apply positive discrimination to women in order to increase women’s representation within our internal structure and in the corporate businesses we serve.
