There is an old proverb that translates to “Behind Every Great Man is a Great
Woman.” While the idiom is usually attributed to a wife, the meaning is
literal and can often be applied to the women on your team or within
your company who may not have received the credit they deserve, but have
played a significant role where the man, or in our case, the company,
has succeeded.
Women now make up 47 percent of the workforce, and
they account for 11 percent of the construction industry overall (there
are no statistics available on what percentage of the 11 percent are
unique to the insulation industry). According to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, women in the construction industry (if statistics are
believed) are still severely underrepresented, but have made astonishing
progress, especially in leadership and ownership roles. Service roles,
warehouse and transportation are still areas with little female
representation, primarily at the subcontractor level, suggesting there
is lingering cultural illiteracy and advocacy that continues to be slow
to adapt, or it could be that these are roles women do not naturally
gravitate to. While numbers are helpful, they don’t always tell the
entire story.