The Her Know How reading group opened earlier this month with a session on the recent ethnographic literature on gender and construction. Twenty-three participants joined online from eight countries; about half were academics and half were active practitioners — site managers, trade unionists, designers, and one occupational health researcher.
The conversation circled a familiar finding: the published literature is rich on the experience of women on site as workers, and thinner on the architectural-professional layer above the trades. Meanwhile, in the trades themselves, the literature concentrates heavily on Northern European and North American sites; field studies from South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America circulate in different journals and rarely cross over.
What the group will do
Over the next six months the group will run monthly sessions, each anchored by one paper and one practitioner respondent. The reading list is on the subgroup page; the next session is on training pathways and apprenticeship in two contrasting national systems. Members are welcome to propose papers.
