Women Employment In The Construction Industry And Its Impact On The Economic Development Of Tanzania

The economic development of any nation is dependent on its performance in macroeconomic variables notably economic growth, stable prices, international trade and employment. Of all, employment exhibits a great influence over others. Low employment or high unemployment has a direct impact on both output and inflation. Economists believe that the economy operates at its maximum capacity when the labour force is fully employed i.e. potential GDP. On inflation, there exists a trade-off relationship and unemployment as one tends to increase when the other decreases. Chronological discussion on the employment, output and inflation relationship can be traced to Say, Keynesian, Phillips curve and Friedman approaches. The construction industry contributes substantially to employment creation as its activities are dependent mainly on human capital than on a particular piece of equipment, a process or a patent. As an important part of economy, the industry's contribution is evaluated through GDP, GFCF, creation of employment and industrial productivity. To meet its potential contribution to the economy the industry's performance need to be constantly improved. The industry's performance has been a subject of discussion over the years. Some of the factors impeding the proper performance of the industry on the manpower side include: skill shortages, reluctance to recruit and retain right people, and little investment in education and training. On skill shortages, the reasons are first, the tendency of potential young entrants to shun the industry. There are more career choices today than few decades ago and young urban males are opting white collar jobs over blue collar jobs such as construction. Secondly, is the poor image of the industry i.e. 3Ds (Difficult, Dirty and Dangerous) or 3Ks in Japanese (Kitsui, Kitani and Kiken) which the industry has not done a good job to address. Indeed, the industry has much to be proud of if others are let to know its accomplishments. The aftermath of skills shortage is the industry dependence on migrant workforce and replacing labour with machines which in turn increase the unemployment level of the locals, and lead to poor performance as machines can not be completely maneuvered to replace labour. On the industry reluctance to recruit and retain right people, the face of the industry needs to change as the traditional group (males) has failed to deliver to the stakeholders'expectations. The industry, therefore, calls for committed leadership, appropriated customer focus, the need to embrace quality, and commitment to people all of which can be acquired by adopting workforce diversity. The solution to both problems is to increase women representation in the industry. This dissertation meant to determine the level of women representation in the industry and addresses the impact of women resource under representation in the Tanzanian construction industry. The research bases on the data collected from Tanzania by use of questionnaire and interviews. Employers were supplied with questionnaire to insert the number of employees both women and men indicating their positions out of eleven careful selected occupations commonly found in the industry. Additionally, interviews were held to obtain the views of employees. The results were encoded and analyzed using the SPSS software. In the view to findings from this research, women account for only 22 per cent of construction employment with most of them occupying non-technical fields at the tune of 43 per cent of the total population in the field. The low participation of women in the industry raises their unemployment level and undermines the performance of the economy. Likewise, the low participation of women in the construction industry sends the industry to continuous skill shortages, low productivity and profitability, and dependence on migrant workers. Furthermore, women under representation in the industry imply lack of access to skills which sends them to working poor, and at times turns them into victims of technology advancement. The research has established five factors contributing to the industry devoid of women in Tanzania as low access to education and training, industry's image, lack of social facilities, little access to information, and sex segregation of occupations. On the other hand, the first top five sending factors are increase in education and training, desperately looking for a job, technology advancement, industry perceiving gender equality, and the desire to make a difference. The research also established that having more women owning and running construction related firms will improve productivity...