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Branch report – Hong Kong
WIC Empowering Women Seminar Building a Career in the construction industry
COVID 5th wave did not stop the Women In Construction group from organising a meaningful webinar in collaboration with leading contractor in Hong Kong, Leighton Asia’s WOICE (Women In Construction and Engineering Group), on 28 April 2022.
T
he sharing in this “Empowering Women Seminar” centred on building a career in the construction industry by two speakers from Leighton Asia, Zoe Cuthbert (Construction Manager) and Pinky Yam (Engineer (Building)). Zoe is a mother of 2, who wakes up early at 5:30am every day to take care of her young children before work. Being an experienced Construction Manager working on some massive engineering projects in HK, UK and Australia, she was grateful that the flexible working arrangement at Leighton allows her to balance her professional work and her mothering duties. Her aspiration to drive gender diversity led her and few other staff to found the WOICE within the company, which aims to foster collaboration and support across the company and the construction industry. Pinky is a young and high-achieving engineer who shared her experiences in becoming an engineer and how she excels in this male dominated industry, as one of the finalists of CIMIC Group’s Graduate of the Year 2020 Award. When asked what she would want to do to further increase female representation in the near future, she wished to resume the meaningful project with a charity
group to build playgrounds for children in developing countries around the world which was put on halt due to the pandemic. To support women in the workplace, not only in the construction industry, the speakers and audiences agreed that a supportive working culture, eg longer paternity or ungendered parental leave, adopting flexible working, etc is critical. They called for similar practices and understanding to be cultivated in other companies and this may also require government’s initiative to promote a 5-day working week in construction works to bring a change to the industry. With the COVID condition under better control, WIC hopes to see you at our in-person events in the near future!