How does a com­pa­ny like Brezil­lon tack­le the issue of gen­der equal­i­ty? The world of build­ing and civ­il engi­neer­ing had already begun its trans­for­ma­tion sev­er­al years ago, but Soci­ety is mov­ing on and build­ing and civ­il engi­neer­ing must also con­tin­ue to evolve. Here’s an insider’s view by Céline Anci­aux, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er at Brezillon.

A TP04 engi­neer from the ESTP (nation­al pub­lic works engi­neer­ing school), Céline Anci­aux ini­tial­ly chose to work in road con­struc­tion, a field she was pas­sion­ate about. For 16 years with Eurovia, a sub­sidiary of the Vin­ci Group, she learned about road mate­ri­als, urban work­sites and road and tech­ni­cal infra­struc­tures. «I was lucky enough to work in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent depart­ments, start­ing out on the work­site — for me, know­ing the ter­rain is the basis of every­thing I do! I was able to take part in and/or man­age the con­struc­tion of 8 km of 2x2 lanes, the restruc­tur­ing or devel­op­ment of entire new dis­tricts, study and analyse air­port con­struc­tion sites and work with my teams on the Armistice clear­ing in the for­est of Com­piègne. I joined Brezil­lon in 2021, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of devel­op­ing my career with new skills… repair­ing yes­ter­day to build tomor­row, includ­ing soil reme­di­a­tion, restora­tion of derelict sites and eco­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing, to posi­tion the con­struc­tion indus­try at the heart of the envi­ron­ment, while remain­ing aware of the chal­lenges and needs of a Soci­ety that con­tin­ues to advance tech­no­log­i­cal­ly,» explains the sales man­ag­er today, which enables her to work trans­verse­ly, across all depart­ments, from the design office to con­struc­tion divi­sions, via com­mu­ni­ca­tion, to sup­port cus­tomers and find a solu­tion to their needs. 

Breaking a macho tradition in the Public Works sector

Accord­ing to a study con­duct­ed by IPSOS (Polling Com­pa­ny) for the Asso­ci­a­tion des Grandes Écoles au Féminin between 2003 and 2005, in the 2000s, 62% of com­pa­ny direc­tors thought that women were less avail­able, 55% that they were less mobile and 35% that they showed less ambi­tion. The same study showed that 88% of female grad­u­ates from top-rank­ing busi­ness schools work an aver­age of 50 hours a week, 71% trav­el fre­quent­ly and 62% define suc­cess pri­mar­i­ly in terms of pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess. And if this study focussed on the world of work in gen­er­al, women could do it too in the build­ing and civ­il engi­neer­ing sec­tors, but the males exec­u­tives were still not real­ly open­ing the doors.

«To tell the truth, the con­struc­tion indus­try has a hard time break­ing out of this very «strong, vir­ile macho» vision, with its very marked patri­archy… «it sticks to safe­ty shoes like a good coat of hot tar». And yet, if we were to look in the rearview mir­ror, we can admire how much change has occurred over the last two decades! So why not ask what women bring to the con­struc­tion indus­try? Well, quite sim­ply what they can bring to all areas of soci­ety and the pro­fes­sion­al world: enrich­ment through diver­si­ty, diver­si­ty of thought, points of view, man­age­ment styles, ideas and meth­ods,» assures Céline Anci­aux. The con­tri­bu­tion made by women to pub­lic works, the build­ing and civ­il engi­neer­ing sec­tors has helped to dust off this old image, enabling the con­struc­tion trades to enter a key phase: their trans­for­ma­tion and evo­lu­tion with­in mod­ern Soci­ety. «Our sec­tor has thus been able to see young women dare to love con­struc­tion work or engi­neer­ing, etc., and help cre­ate a larg­er tal­ent pool with a wide diver­si­ty of skills, sen­si­tiv­i­ties and approach­es that always enrich teams to design, adapt, reha­bil­i­tate or build tomorrow’s world.»

A real commitment: adopting ‘equal pay’ policies

Equal­i­ty between men and women was one of the sub­jects of the French pen­sion reform law already ini­ti­at­ed in 2010, which required com­pa­nies with more than 50 employ­ees to work towards an equal­i­ty agree­ment or action plan. Bouygues Con­struc­tion was there­fore quick to work on this agree­ment, reviewed in 2017 and 2021 and to be reviewed every 4 years to meet the Group’s gen­der diver­si­ty ambi­tions men­tioned ear­li­er. «Our HR depart­ment is now trained in equal oppor­tu­ni­ties, part­ner­ships are cre­at­ed with «Elles Bougent and “We Link” the net­work of women man­agers at BY cre­at­ed in 2013. We are also work­ing on equal pay, which may have exist­ed or still exist, depend­ing on the posi­tion and the individual’s back­ground. When I start­ed work­ing in 2004 in the pub­lic works sec­tor, it was very rare to see women in con­struc­tion activ­i­ties and those who want­ed to make a career here were some­times redi­rect­ed more towards design offices… « Because you know, the con­struc­tion site is a very impor­tant job. Because, you know, build­ing sites are tough…». That’s where pas­sion and deter­mi­na­tion make the dif­fer­ence! You hang in there, you find your­self in meet­ings where you’re the only woman and they ask you to serve the cof­fee, «jok­ing­ly». Today, in the Bouygues Group, I’ve seen a real com­mit­ment to gen­der equal­i­ty on the part of every­one involved. But if mea­sures or actions are mon­i­tored by KPIs (Key Per­for­mance Indi­ca­tors), it means that the bat­tle isn’t over and that there’s still a lot to do.»

Women have a big role to play

At Bouygues, there is a real incen­tive to present female CVs in male-dom­i­nat­ed fields, and vice ver­sa. Steps are being tak­en both inside and out­side the com­pa­ny to change atti­tudes. «I was a nice, well-behaved lit­tle girl, but I nev­er thought that being a civ­il engi­neer was a man’s job and, in fact, I nev­er clas­si­fied jobs by gen­der. What about the women who join the army or the fire depart­ment? If they pos­sess and mas­ter the skills, why not? At Brezil­lon, Bouygues Bâtiment’s envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing sub­sidiary spe­cial­iz­ing in soil decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion, mate­ri­als recov­ery, earth­works and com­plex plat­forms, and eco­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing, we now have 20% female man­agers and super­vi­sors, but Bouygues Bâti­ment France has set itself the tar­get of 35% for all sec­tors com­bined,» adds Céline Anci­aux, who has ben­e­fit­ed from tutor­ing and men­tor­ing sys­tems. Last but not least, and at the heart of day-to-day gen­der equal­i­ty, Bouygues is com­mit­ted to com­bat­ing sex­ism and harass­ment. «Ref­er­ents have been appoint­ed in each enti­ty to report inci­dents and ques­tions, and to com­bat the ordi­nary, every­day sex­ism that can destroy a person’s self-esteem. I think it’s cer­tain­ly one of the most com­plex bat­tles, because it’s a social phe­nom­e­non that’s invad­ing the com­pa­ny,» she con­cludes. Over the years, I’ve seen young women become deter­mined when they’ve made this choice, and I’ve also seen male atti­tudes evolve. And final­ly, when we see that it works very well as soon as employ­ees are open and have an intel­li­gent mind, then I think it’s much sim­pler to apply laws and agreements.»

KD