When engineering executive Diana Zagora got her start in the engineering and construction industry, it was the late 90s and family-friendly workplace policies were nonexistent. 

The sector was so male-dominated at the time, her first worksite – setting up for the Sydney 2000 Olympics – didn’t even have a women’s restroom.

“A port-a-loo had to be brought in for me because there were only men’s toilet facilities,” Zagora tells Women’s Agenda on episode four of the Family Friendly Workplaces podcast. 

“The dunny that was brought in was nicknamed Diana’s Dunny.

“And then as the project went on there were more women on-site and better, more permanent facilities were established.”

While the industry has made a lot of progress since then, engineering and construction still don’t have the strongest reputations when it comes to being family friendly, or even women-friendly.

The latest data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency shows that the gender pay gap in heavy and civil engineering construction significantly exceeds the national private sector average across all gender pay gap metrics. 

“The culture has definitely shifted to be more inclusive,” says Zagora. 

“As a young engineer back in the late 90s, there were a lot of challenges.

“Now, there’s more acceptance and greater awareness of people of different ages and from different ethnicities, genders, sexualities and religious backgrounds.”

Looking back, Zagor says progress in the industry over the last 25 years has come in “leaps and bounds”.

But she, like other leaders advocating for working parents and carers in the sector, believes there’s room for growth.

“We need to increase female participation in engineering,” she said.

“Having a workplace that promotes flexibility, that has parental leave and access to carer’s leave and promotes those benefits, as well as recruits and values diversity in their workforce is tremendously important.”

The CEO of Infrastructure Australia, Adam Copp, has led his organisation through the Family Friendly Workplaces accreditation process. 

He shares the process it took on the podcast and explains how he built a business case to show what kind of benefits his organisation would reap by taking steps to become more inclusive. 

Since making the changes, Copp says the benefits are even more than they could have expected. 

“A family-friendly workplace is actually a really good thing to do, I think morally, but it’s also good for business,” he said.

“It helps with your talent attraction and wellbeing, helps with productivity, and helps with the brand of you as an employer.”