Advancing gender equality in the construction sector through public procurement: Making effective use of responsive regulation

Tessa Wright and Hazel Conley
Additional contact information
Tessa Wright: School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Hazel Conley: Faculty of Business and Law, University of the West of England, UK

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2020, vol. 41, issue 4, 975-996

Abstract: Labour market segregation continues to be a major barrier to gender equality, with the construction industry an example of a particularly male-dominated sector. Drawing on evidence from the Women into Construction project, established to increase women’s opportunities to work on the construction of London’s Olympic Park, the article argues that public procurement is a potentially powerful tool for breaking down gender segregation. This is particularly effective when new forms of responsive and reflexive legislation require private sector contractors to achieve social objectives. The authors argue that this could be made more effective through greater powers of engagement for stakeholders, including trade unions.

Keywords: Construction industry; London Olympics; public procurement; public sector equality duty; responsive regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X17745979 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:41:y:2020:i:4:p:975-996

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X17745979

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().