IWD: We need to keep the pressure on to achieve equality in our sector

Ahead of International Women’s Day, we caught up with women across our business to discuss their career paths, working in regeneration and placemaking, and what IWD means for them.

We spoke with Lisa Gledhill, Managing Director of National Partnerships, about this year’s IWD theme – ‘Accelerate Action.’

As Managing Director of National Partnerships my role is to amplify and accelerate the impact of our current national partnerships – including ECF and Habiko – expand the range of our national partnership offer and develop more opportunities to work together with the public and private sector.

In Bradford, where I was born and raised, ECF – our partnership with Legal & General and Homes England – is delivering Bradford City Village. We are reimagining the city’s historic commercial centre as a new neighbourhood with up to 1,000 homes, new jobs, retail and public spaces.

It’s a game-changing regeneration, and one I’m proud to now play some small part in.

I can see the power of place in changing the trajectory of economic regeneration. It’s one of the reasons I joined Muse, to have an impact on those communities which have been left behind by traditional approaches.

I’ve been fortunate to have enjoyed a 30-year career in this great industry, supporting delivery of some of the world’s most impactful regeneration opportunities – from the £2.4bn International Quarter London, on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, to the £2bn Paya Lebar Quarter in Singapore.

In this time, I have seen our industry change for the better.  However, reflecting on this year’s International Women’s Day theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, there is still much more to do and we need to pick up the pace.

Without doubt it is more open and welcoming. It is more supportive, and the culture is helping to attract dynamic and intelligent women into our workforce. Muse has been at the leading edge of this change. Its proof is in the depth of female talent which is obvious across all levels of our business, including our senior leadership team.

As a teenager thinking about my future career, I was able to attend a few days at Bradford University as part of a Women in Science and Engineering initiative #WISE. It proved to be defining for my future trajectory.

I attended lectures and researched the range of engineering disciplines open to me, and I was annoyed.

I was annoyed at the commonplace, and subconscious, use of gender-biased language and assumptions. ‘He’ or ‘his’ was the default, it was rare to hear ‘She’ or ‘hers’, and Dads were the go-to to define a working role model.

It reflected disciplines in which gender stereotypes were deep-rooted. However, the world of the built environment shown by the civil engineers looked appealing.

Taking on a civil engineering degree, getting chartered and navigating the industry didn’t put me off. It was a tough sector to build a career as a woman, but I never stopped showing up.

Today, we are much more cognisant of the positive contribution more diverse and representative teams can make to our performance as a sector.

At Muse, we continue to work hard to ensure our teams really do represent the communities in which we operate – whether in Bradford or elsewhere. We take great pride in supporting our people, investing in our workforce, and nurturing talent.

However, if we are to Accelerate Action we can’t take our eye off the ball.

Place-based regeneration is full of career opportunities and provides an attractive starting point for women. Building on this, we need to maintain our focus on ensuring that our work environment and culture is inclusive so that as well as attracting women into the sector, we retain them.

Finally, female role models in senior leadership positions continue to be critical, pushing young women to think bigger and with greater aspiration.

These types of interventions are what will, over time, change the environment for women in the industry for good. We need to keep up the pressure.