Gail Royston - Bachelor of Construction
Massey graduate Gail Royston could have been painting other people’s fingernails, but is instead building a reputation as a young star in the tough, male-dominated construction industry.
Choices, choices. Ms Royston was nearing the end of school in Auckland and the way into the world of work seemed to hinge on her top marks in English or her teenage preoccupation with good looks, pretty clothes and the right shade of blusher. What wasn't at all on her mind was heading into the construction industry along with its plethora of men.
Ideas change. As it transpired, the industry was to capture her. Massey University's distance education programme gave her the entree into that domain before she had even graduated – and the flexibility to keep studying while she worked.
But she took a little time to hanker after hard hats and knuckling down to a degree.
In year-12, she opted, as part of the school's "career trial" programme, to do a beautician's course. “I learned to do nails and waxing, random beautician's stuff – massage and that kind of thing. I didn't like it. I kind of liked getting stuff done to me rather than doing it to other people. I don't wear much makeup. Everyone else there loved it.”
In year-13 a media career became an obvious fit with her excellence in English and media studies – “but half the people in my class were aiming for communications and that line of work. I evaluated my options.”
Enter her father, who, with her mother, had left an increasingly dangerous South Africa when Ms Royston was seven, to give their daughter a safer life and a good education.
“Dad was a marine engineer by trade and went into project management on construction sites.” She had never been bored by his work-talk, riveted even.
“I liked hearing about management and the structures he'd built.”
They discussed her future. She decided to follow, in a way, in his footsteps, or at least study for a degree that allowed her a multitude of workforce choices.
“When I decided what I wanted to do, I found the degree at Massey.”
Four years ago she signed up for a Bachelor of Construction, majoring in quantity surveying; swapping fulltime study 18 months ago for long-distance study and a fulltime job. She works as an assistant cost manager for giant consulting company Beca in Christchurch's taxing post-earthquake environment.
This year, Ms Royston, 22, graduated from Massey to immediate acclaim. The university named her Emerging Leader on the strength of her final-year papers and she has become the compelling face of its website's construction programme page. In May, the Hays National Association of Women in Construction awarded her its inaugural Student or Apprentice Excellence Award.
She has stepped from a male-dominated university course into a workforce dominated by men. There were, she says, three women and 100 men in her first year at Massey.
“In the industry women are fully outnumbered by men, though that's definitely changing. Recent stats show there is 1 per cent of women overall.”
The idea of a glass ceiling in the industry became the focus of exploration in her last year of study at Massey. This was prompted by an internship in Malaysia in a Kuala Lumpur construction business.
“I was there for three months, really interesting. I went to a small place, a small, little company. They were all girls, like a little family. I came back and was working with guys. It felt so equal in Malaysia. Women engineers were running meetings and random things I went to were pretty equal. It was not a male-dominated industry.”
Her study of women in diverse businesses in the New Zealand construction industry found both biases against and a welcome for women, “and women not wanting to get in because of the predominance of men and thinking there might be something wrong with the industry”.
Now, with her own experience in the costing of earthquake-damaged roads and buildings fully informing her, she has decided a glass ceiling can be an individual construction. Women, like their male counterparts, need to “pay attention on site. You need to try and learn things.
“I don't think there is a glass ceiling. It depends on the person and the effort put in.”
It might be difficult to work in the industry “if you hated men. It would be hard to do a job that is about equality. Everyone here is so helpful. They're trying to help to the next step of a career. It's not just what we can do for them.”
Royston is one of four women cost managers of 12 that Beca employs.
“Beca has a graduate programme and is interested in helping in a structured way. It has been really good.”
As a spinoff, she aims to add her own voice to promoting careers in an industry she feels is inadequately advertised to girls leaving school. She has become part of the Futureintech scheme, run by the Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand with the aim of sharing career experiences of technologists, scientists and engineers with students.
What now? Battered Christchurch will not be her stamping ground much longer. She is taking her commitment to her career to the world's style centre, Paris.
“I've decided to go for a year to do quantity surveying. I learned French at school and want to learn it fluently.”
When not working she plans to shop, marvel at fashion and art, and go to shows.
She will see how the construction industry operates there. “Then I think I'll come back. New Zealand's my home.”
Learn more about studying a Bachelor of Construction