ILPC 2027

Compared to other industries, the construction industry is hazardous and has high accident rates. In Sweden, both the employers´ organization and the union are trying to find ways to create a safer work environment, and one strategy is to change attitudes towards safety. Based on essentialist notions of differences between women and men regarding safety attitudes and behavior, another strategy is to increase the number of women. It is however a challenge to attract and retain women in the industry. Changing attitudes towards women and towards safety are often thought of as two separate tracks in addressing the issue of a safe work environment, but there is research indicating that they are closely related. Ely and Meyerson (2010) describe how efforts made to enhance safety in offshore oil platforms also resulted in changes of the workers behavior patterns by decreasing stereotypical masculine behavior. In line with this, the aim of this paper is to investigate if, and if so how, attitudes towards safety and women are interconnected and part of shaping identity in the construction industry.

There is research addressing gender and safety in the construction industry. Iacuone (2005) shows how hegemonic gender structures, e.g. a certain type of masculinity, affect the workers’ perceptions of occupational health and safety in a way that makes them care less about their own safety. According to Ness (2012) the rough and tough masculine culture of the industry encourages safety risk-taking behavior and keeps women out. Concerned with social identity and gender, Baxter and Wallace (2009) studied the interactions of male construction workers in the construction industry. While some male groups were “demonized” and therefore positioned as an out-group, women were hardly mentioned in the male construction workers’ conversations. This was interpreted as if women represented such a non-threat that they did not even exist as an out-group. Other researchers have investigated social identity and its implications on safety behavior in the construction industry focusing other exclusion mechanisms of relevance for our study. Andersen et al. (2015), for example concluded that in-group behavior created barriers against other groups in the organization, for example against management, making it more difficult to implement initiatives aimed at enhancing safety behavior.