The only woman in the room

I've been working in the construction industry for more than 20 years now. It's a traditional sector, very much male-dominated. But that has never deterred me from it. I also went to engineering school, and the majority of the students were male (I think less than 15% were female). I'm using an outdated binary classification here, I know. If women are considered a minority in construction, wait until you look at non-binary gender data. It's bad. What inspired me to write about this was a meeting I attended the other day at my company. It was a senior management meetup between my company and a major subtrade we frequently do business with. It was basically for introductions and discussions on future opportunities. I entered the boardroom, and after I introduced myself to everybody and everyone had arrived, I looked around and realized I was the only woman in there! There were 18 people in total in that room, giving us a 5.5% diversity representation. I'm not saying there are no women…